https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/drug-related-hospital-emergency-room-visits
In 2009, there were nearly 4.6 million drug-related ED visits nationwide. These visits included reports of drug abuse, adverse reactions to drugs, or other drug-related consequences. Almost 50 percent were attributed to adverse reactions to pharmaceuticals taken as prescribed, and 45 percent involved drug abuse. DAWN estimates that of the 2.1 million drug abuse visits—
- 27.1 percent involved nonmedical use of pharmaceuticals (i.e., prescription or OTC medications, dietary supplements)
- 21.2 percent involved illicit drugs
- 14.3 percent involved alcohol, in combination with other drugs
In one SINGLE YEAR… 650,000 ER visits were contributed to the consumption of the drug ALCOHOL
DEA Argues That Public Comment Is Unnecessary Before Kratom Ban
People with substance dependence issues or chronic pain were dealt a blow yesterday when the DEA announced their intent to effectively ban the medicinal chemicals present in the plant, Mitragyna speciosa, or kratom.
Chuck Rosenberg, acting administrator of the DEA, claims the action “is necessary to avoid an imminent hazard to the public safety.” As an example of the risks of kratom, the DEA cites a CDC study published this summer that counted 660 poison control calls during a five-year period from 2010 to 2015 on behalf of people suffering untoward reactions to the herb or teas made from the plant material.
The relative magnitude of this “hazard to public safety” has been called into question by kratom users and commenters here at Forbes. To put kratom risks in perspective, poison control centers received 6,843 reports of young children ingesting single-load laundry pods in just the first seven months of 2016.
When I first wrote about kratom for another publication earlier this summer, I had assumed that it was primarily used for recreational purposes because it has mild, self-limiting effects on opioid receptors. To my surprise, more than three-quarters of reader comments at Forbes and on my Twitter and Facebook feeds are from people who’ve been using kratom to relieve chronic pain, clinical anxiety and depression, and in recovery from opioid and alcohol dependence.
I’m truly fascinated by these testimonials despite the effects not being quantified in a controlled clinical trial. Very recent work from researchers at Columbia University and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center have revealed that the alkaloids in kratom have modest but distinctive effects on opioid receptors by selectively activating beneficial pathways over those that cause the majority of opioid side effects. These test tube and animal studies require further confirmation in clinical studies.
But my reading of the DEA’s notice of intent, as published today in the Federal Register, reveals that these accounts and the recently published data were not among the considerations leading to the temporary placement of mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine onto Schedule I of the U.S. Controlled Substances Act.
But since this ruling will not take effect for 30 days–September 30, 2016–one would think that the agency would implement a public and scientific comment period and field the concerns of those who were blindsided by the announcement.
Well, that’s probably not going to happen.
Near the end of the Federal Register publication is this section on regulatory matters:
Inasmuch as section 201(h) of the CSA directs that temporary scheduling actions be issued by order and sets forth the procedures by which such orders are to be issued, the DEA believes that the notice and comment requirements of section 553 of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 553, do not apply to this notice of intent. In the alternative, even assuming that this notice of intent might be subject to section 553 of the APA, the Administrator finds that there is good cause to forgo the notice and comment requirements of section 553, as any further delays in the process for issuance of temporary scheduling orders would be impracticable and contrary to the public interest in view of the manifest urgency to avoid an imminent hazard to the public safety. [emphasis mine]
To the contrary, an objective examination of the 100+ comments I’ve received here at Forbes tells me that foregoing the notice and comment requirements is in direct opposition to the public interest. At the very least, it’s an imbalance between the alleged risks of kratom and the anecdotal benefits of the herb.
In fact, banning kratom may cause more damage that leaving it as-is, bought and used as a botanical tea.
In my next article, I’ll speak with kratom users and the academic scientists who are revealing how the bioactive compounds in kratom contrast from strong, highly addictive opioids.
For more health and pharmaceutical news and commentary, follow me on Twitter @DavidKroll, or here at Forbes.com.
Filed under: General Problems
I’m a college educated, tax paying, law abiding grandmother. Chronic intractable pain has disabled my lifestyle for a solid 25 years. I did experience a period of relatively good medical care for my significant pain syndrome. Everything changed two years ago when the pain specialist I’d been a patient of for 10 years was harassed by the CDC DEA & I was told there were Medicare billing issues as well. No pharmacist would fill my prescription written by him even tho his medical license was in good standing. Fast forward to this day and I feel like I’m living in a DEA cdc nazi controlled environment. We either need to pool our money or find a very wealthy benefactor to help us hire a team of lawyers to sue the two USA FEDERAL GOVERNMENT agencies responsible for causing what I consider a national disaster.
We are fighting to hard to stop this! So many lives will be devastated if this goes through. I am a chronic pain patient, scoliosis, spinal stenosis, nerve damage, scar tissue, 3 messed up discs, and the bottom one now has a hole in it. And arthritis growing in me like kudzu. I went to pain management where I was treated like dirt. Same with the pharmacy that I had done 10 years business with. My doctor insisted on steroid shots to prescribe any medicine. I cannot take steroids without getting horribly ill. He didn’t care. And they did NOTHING to help my pain, in fact it made it worse. After about 7 years I couldn’t take anymore. I had become someone I didn’t want to be, exhausted, anxious, depressed and humiliated. I weaned myself off the medication and tried to find something herbal to help. And I found kratom. I have been taking it for about a year now, and I have my life back. And now the government wants to take it away. I am an old lady, I don’t run the streets or party, and I don’t take this tea to get “high” (which it doesn’t do anyway) I just want to have some quality of life, and be able to take care of my family, my home, my pets, myself. This goes beyond just taking away a plant-the way they are doing it, they are basically telling American Citizens to sit down, shut up, we do not have the right to be heard or listened to by our own government. There are some vets in our group that take it for PTSD, and pain from the injuries they received in service to our country-they are also being basically told they do not have a right to be heard by the country they were willing to give their life for! And if this goes through, some folks won’t be able to take the living hell of constant debilitating pain that they are forced back into-and they won’t make it. There is a petition going around, please sign it to let our government know this is wrong. It has to be confirmed by email to count. This is not the America I grew up in. #IAMKRATOM https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/please-do-not-make-kratom-schedule-i-substance
this illogical, controlling, we know best bull shit makes me sick
Steve, re Kratom: remember, if you don’t look for it, you’ll not find it. Fewer and fewer “screens” are set up so that incidental findings are detected (in either clinical or postmortem investigations. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Just another LIEfFUL propaganda data tool to tell us as Adults in a no longer free country,,that thee government believes it is their rite to control,and to tell adults how we should ;live our lifes and what we are allowed be and to put in our own bodies..u know,,it was once believed/written by thee founding fathers of this country that as free adults in a once free country,,,that we had a right to live our lives as we see fit,,and we had the feedom /confidence that that freedom would NEVER be taken from us,,,,,,WAKE UP PEOPLE ,,THE RIGHT AND THE FREEDOM TO LIVE OUR LIVES AS WE SEE FIT,TO SIMPLE BE,, AS WE SEE FIT,,, ,AS FREE HUMANBEINGS HAS BEEN TAKEN FROM US,,AGAIN,AGAIN AND AGAIN,,, as u sit here reading this,,mary