During my scouring of the net last week I found a few things that really struck a nerve with me. The first was a video on youtube titled DEA warns about Kratom, and the second was a news article warning about kratom. Both of them had similar misinformation, incorrect facts, and was labeled as “news”.
“A Legal Heroin…” Miss Angela Vickey says….. Are you kidding me? If I was the admissions director at a rehab, would you not research the topic you were being asked about? Here is a number that may be important to find out before making such a statement….. How many people has kratom helped kick Heroine/Opiate addiction compared to how many people have went to Rehab due to a kratom addiction? Maybe she has already proven that the 12 steps is all that is needed to kick a habit? 
The video references a DEA statement that was released almost two years ago now. for the majority of information and headliner. 320 Views on your yotube video, I am surprised such relevant news has not went viral yet with such relevant and new information!
I also really love how the same news article on KXAN starts out with a sentence that says “Kratom has been around for centuries” and then uses a quote at the end of the NEWS from Angela Vickrey which states “”Its new and its edgy and there’s the great unknown about it…”. Oooops….. I will give Miss Vickrey the benefit of the doubt for her multiple quotes used in the KXAN report. Maybe she is over-worked. As for the Austin Recovery Center, hey all press is good press, right?? No comments for KXAN, I would need to pull out the archives to find some relative news and I just don’t have the time.
Now to my point. Kratom has received an awful lot of negative press lately, and if you actually look at the news or happenings involving kratom – there is none. Besides the unfortunate story of the two Canadian sisters in Thailand, my sympathy goes out to the families, what a sad story!
Where is all this negative kratom press coming from? With no real negative nor positive news on a subject it has to make me think there is some party putting money & time into a negative publicity campaign. This would have to be someone who would benefit from kratom being either made illegal… Who could do that? Thats a tough one…. if I were to take a wild guess I would say Big Pharma? Just Maybe?
Who else has incentive to see kratom banned? At this time I can not think of any large entity that does except for the pharmaceutical companies. As kratom continues to grow in popularity and more research comes out about the positive attributes of kratom, the possible medicinal uses, and it’s reputation for helping people kick opiate addiction it is no wonder why Big Pharma would want to put a stop to it. According to a drugabuse.gov report in Dec 11, 5.1 million people in the USA are taking pain killing prescription medication NON-MEDICALLY. Now I don’t know how accurate that number is, just thought I would give a quick reference point.
5.1 Million people addicted and obtaining a product illegally + everyone else who is prescribed the medication and abuses it + the people who actually need it = $$$ A Fortune $$$
Business is Business, so you can’t get mad at them for protecting there assets, but where do we draw the line? My line draws where your actions start negatively affecting other people in the world. To promote a ban on a plant that has no known associated deaths and such a bright future is wrong and needs to stop. The lack of any real substance to the recent publicity blitz really makes me believe there is some big money behind this campaign. News Media would not just pick kratom to start focusing on, government would handle the publicity much differently, so who is left?
If I am right (which I hope I’m not) Big Pharma should hire a new publicist. It really feels like someone is taking inspiration from the Marijuana Propaganda Campaign and hoping the same tactics will still work today. I have a feeling this is the start of a battle that could be even uglier than past Plant related legislation.
