Kratom advocates have rallied tens of thousands of people to submit comments to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that will help inform the U.S. position on how the substance should be classified under international law.<\/p>\n
In October, the World Health Organization\u2019s (WHO) Expert Committee on Drug Dependence will discuss whether to recommend that kratom be globally scheduled. While FDA opened a public comment period for input<\/a> that was set to end on August 9, the American Kratom Association (AKA) successfully sued for an extension that ended this week.<\/p>\n With those extra weeks for input, AKA\u2019s online activist portal managed to get more than 63,000 people to share their experiences, scientific literature and recommendations encouraging the U.S. to oppose an international ban. FDA itself has logged about 26,000 comments that were directly sent in through the federal government\u2019s own submission site<\/a>.<\/p>\n Advocates have been skeptical about FDA\u2019s intent with the upcoming committee meeting, with some suspecting that it initially limited the comment period window to minimize activists\u2019 ability to push back against a ban.<\/p>\n \u201cThe FDA is attacking the right of every American to make their own decisions about their health and well-being, and we have to send a strong message to the WHO to stand up against the unfair treatment of the FDA for any natural product, including kratom,\u201d Mac Haddow, senior fellow on public policy at the AKA, said in a press release.<\/p>\n Kratom has been touted as a natural painkiller that works as a safer alternative to prescription opioids, but the U.S. agency doesn\u2019t quite see it that way.<\/p>\n \u201cKratom is abused for its ability to produce opioid-like effects,\u201d FDA wrote in a notice on the comment period last month. \u201cKratom is available in several different forms to include dried\/crushed leaves, powder, capsules, tablets, liquids, and gum\/ resin. Kratom is an increasingly popular drug of abuse and readily available on the recreational drug market in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n As it stands, kratom is not scheduled under the federal Controlled Substances Act or under international drug treaties to which the U.S. is a party. But some advocates suspect that since FDA has been unable so far to impose a ban on kratom domestically, it may use the WHO convention as an opportunity to get prohibition enacted internationally, a move that the country would be compelled to comply with.<\/p>\n FDA doesn\u2019t technically need to send the comments to the WHO committee for consideration, so AKA plans to take feedback its received and circumvent the U.S. agency by providing it to the international body.<\/p>\n Haddow told Marijuana Moment in a phone interview on Thursday that the group has heard from WHO representatives who\u2019ve said the deadline for member nations to comment is September 24, so AKA is still inviting people to use its online portal<\/a> to weigh in regardless of the fact that FDA closed its extended comment period on Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s clear that, even though we got the extended [comment] period, there\u2019s no good faith here by the FDA,\u201d Haddow said. \u201cThere\u2019s no question where the FDA is. We could have a million comments and it won\u2019t change them. They\u2019re going to continue to recommend that kratom should be scheduled and banned, not only here in the United States, but globally.\u201d<\/p>\n The House Appropriations Committee recently approved a report to spending legislation<\/a>\u00a0that says federal health agencies have \u201ccontributed to the continued understanding of the health impacts of kratom, including its constituent compounds, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Committee is aware of the potential promising results of kratom for acute and chronic pain patients who seek safer alternatives to sometimes dangerously addictive and potentially deadly prescription opioids and of research investigating the use of kratom\u2019s constituent compounds for opioid use disorder,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n It also directed the Health and Human Services secretary to continue to refrain from recommending that kratom be controlled in Schedule I.<\/p>\n Late last year, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) asked the public to help identify research that specifically\u00a0looks at the risks and benefits of cannabinoids and kratom<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last year separately\u00a0received more than one thousand comments concerning kratom<\/a>\u00a0as part of another public solicitation.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Thailand\u2019s government recently ended<\/a> that nation\u2019s criminalization of kratom.<\/p>\n FDA has on several occasions solicited public input to shape the government\u2019s position on the\u00a0international scheduling of marijuana<\/a>\u00a0and cannabinoids. The agency initially requested feedback on the proposal in March 2019 and then reopened that comment period five months later.<\/p>\n Last year, the United Nations approved a U.S.-backed WHO recommendation to\u00a0remove marijuana from the most restrictive global scheduling category<\/a>. However, the U.S.\u00a0opposed several other cannabis reform proposals<\/a>, including the one to clarify that CBD is not under international control.<\/p>\n California Bill To Legalize Psychedelics Possession Put On Pause Until 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Photo courtesy of Wikimedia\/ThorPorre<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n The post Kratom Activists Send Tens Of Thousands Of Comments Telling FDA To Oppose Possible International Ban<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Kratom advocates have rallied tens of thousands of people to submit comments to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that will help inform the U.S. position on how the substance should be classified under international law. In October, the World Health Organization\u2019s (WHO) Expert Committee on Drug Dependence will discussContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49658"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49658"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49659,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49658\/revisions\/49659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Kratom Activists Send Tens Of Thousands Of Comments Telling FDA To Oppose Possible International Ban<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"