How to Keep Kratom Legal

Despite positive health data from decades of traditional kratom use in Southeast Asia, the kratom industry still encounters constant regulatory hurdles from federal agencies. And kratom is not the first plant government regulators have targeted. Kratom advocates can learn a lot about how to keep kratom legal by looking at the CBD industry. 

What Can We Learn From the CBD Industry?

You can find CBD everywhere today. It’s in convenience stores, pet food stores, small businesses, and large chains. As a society, we’ve accepted CBD for the most part, incorporated it into our daily lives, and haven’t looked back. But it hasn’t always been this way. It’s taken an organized campaign of CBD supporters many years to get the results we see today. And the kratom industry can learn from their efforts.

 The state-by-state strategy used to legalize CBD can work to keep kratom legal, too. The key is to ensure that public perception of kratom doesn’t fall by the wayside because of the FDA’s red-listing. Advocates need to remain vocal and active to prevent this from happening. The FDA would like for the scientific community to gather more data on both CBD and Kratom. But for Kratom advocates, over two hundred years of kratom use in its native region is evidence enough. Fortunately, more recent data, such as this February 2020 study done by Johns Hopkins University, is now available. Despite the FDA’s stance, people use both substances regularly, relying on their own ability to research and

What are Kratom Advocates Doing to Keep Kratom Legal?

 Kratom advocates have presented the science to individual state legislatures to speak against proposals that ban the plant. This process takes time and personnel, but it is effective. Using this strategy to remove bans at the state level, one by one, can continue to ward off state bans until the FDA and DEA have enough research to slow and eventually stop their pursuit to criminalize and limit kratom imports.

Federal regulatory agencies develop regulations on herbal products to protect the public while not overstepping people’s freedom, but federal and state laws often butt heads, and the line between personal freedom and public protection is very subjective. CBD legalization walked a fine line as it became legal state-by-state and eventually federally under strict THC percentage regulations. Kratom doesn’t have a controversial psychoactive component like THC, so it could have fewer hoops to jump through than CBD, but advocates need to be diligent at supporting the plant on the state and local level to ward off overreach from federal regulatory agencies.

How Can You Keep Kratom Legal?

You may wonder what you can do to help keep kratom legal as a consumer. The most important thing you can do is support responsible vendors. Only buy from vendors who are marketing kratom in a way that doesn’t violate FDA guidelines. Vendors who claim to cure, treat, or prevent disease are in violation of FDA guidelines for herbal products. Only big pharma companies with FDA approved pharmaceuticals can boast such claims on their packaging and advertisements.

In 2021, user fees paid for 46% of the FDA’s 6.1 billion dollar budget. What are user fees you may ask? They are sums that pharmaceutical companies pay to the FDA in exchange for an expedited review of substances for which they are seeking FDA approval. In other words, pharmaceutical companies largely fund the agency that approves their products for the marketplace. It is not surprising that the FDA would favor an industry that keeps them in existence. Just imagine how many FDA jobs those user fees support.

Victory in the fight to keep kratom legal is well within reach of kratom advocates. Although the FDA’s influence may seem insurmountable at times, all we have to do is look at the CBD industry and how far it has come in recent years to know that kratom can survive the scrutiny. We do have the power to change the narrative and to a large degree we already have.