DEA's primary objective is justifying its existence, so it's a bit surprising it didn't happen already. Terrible decision. Obama signed the Comprehensive Addic

DEA's primary objective is justifying its existence, so it's a bit surprising it didn't happen already. Terrible decision. Obama signed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act into law a few weeks ago, which has a $900MM budget over a few years. I'd wager a lot of that money will go to makers/marketers of Narcan and other suboptimal solutions. Kratom leaf has never killed anyone. Extracts have never killed anyone (there are few companies that do a supercritical CO2 extraction of mitragynine and 7-OHM). There were a few O-DSMT deaths misattributed to kratom, and IIRC a few more cases of people having kratom in their system while they died from something else. Because you can't OD on kratom, it's a tremendously powerful tool in harm reduction for recovering heroin addicts. This ban is a terrible decision that could easily lead to the death of those who turn back to the substances that kratom helped them kick. The most telling thing in this whole story is that salvia is still legal. Why? Because it's not competing with big pharma. Tangental but interesting bit of trivia: the American Kratom Association's executive director is Nancy Pelosi's son.