The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been releasing misinformation about Kratom for years in an attempt to get Kratom banned, likely due to the fact that the FDA receives over $1 billion per year from Big Pharma via the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), and therefore the FDA tends to do what Big Pharma wants, and Big Pharma wants to get Kratom banned since Kratom is a threat to Big Pharma’s profits. Indeed, there are numerous peer reviewed scientific studies proving the safety, efficacy, and benefits of Kratom, and the FDA maliciously ignores them.
A key part of the FDA’s misinformation strategy is to claim that Kratom is deadly, and the FDA has compiled 44 ‘Kratom deaths’ in order to prove this point.
Zooming out, it is a bit absurd to declare Kratom dangerous and deadly over 44 deaths, since Tobacco kills more than 44 people every 3 minutes, totaling over 8 million deaths every year, and is FDA approved, and synthetic opioids and opiates kill 118,000 people every year, yet the FDA approves all prescription synthetic opioids and opiates.
Things get even more absurd when closely analyzing the deaths that the FDA claims are due to Kratom. The American Kratom Association analyzed all 44 FDA ‘Kratom deaths’, and the results are shocking.
1 of the 44 deaths was actually due to a gunshot wound to the chest, and the FDA wrongly says that this is a Kratom death just because the victim was a Kratom user.
Another one of the ‘Kratom deaths’ was due to someone falling out of a window while taking a toxic dose of benzodiazepines, and then refusing medical treatment for their injuries. This is a ‘Kratom death’ according to the FDA, because the victim also had Kratom in their system.
In another one of the ‘Kratom deaths’, a person committed suicide by hanging, while on a wide variety of benzodiazepines, anti-depressants, and sleeping pills.
Most of the other 44 FDA ‘Kratom deaths’ involve severe polydrug abuse. A case example is a person who was drinking alcohol, smoking heroin, while popping Vicodin and Xanax, yet somehow the FDA says this is a Kratom death.
Another case example is someone who died in their sleep, next to their bedside assortment of 39 prescription medications, illegal drugs, and supplements, yet somehow Kratom was singled out by the FDA as the cause of death.
In another 21 FDA ‘Kratom deaths’ there was polydrug abuse involving the full range of prescription and illegal drugs, in addition to people who had severe pre-existing medical conditions while abusing multiple drugs, and 9 of these deaths were association with Krypton, a supposed Kratom extract that actually contained the dangerous synthetic opioid O-desmethyltramadol.
The FDA conveniently did not publish any information for 19 out of the 44 supposed ‘Kratom deaths’.
Thus, the FDA claimed that there were 44 Kratom deaths, when in reality none of these deaths could be scientifically proven to be due to Kratom, and almost all of these deaths were obviously due to polydrug abuse. Further, the FDA used underhanded tactics to increase the Kratom death count, such as including deaths caused by gunshots, falling out of a window, and hanging.
To this day there has never been a death scientifically proven to be due to Kratom, making Kratom one of the safest psychoactive supplements in the world, aside from the fact that Kratom likely prevents countless deaths by giving people an alternative to dangerous synthetic opioids and opiates. Considering that, the FDA should be working on approving Kratom for the treatment of chronic pain and opioid dependence, instead of maliciously labeling Kratom as deadly via creating a fake Kratom death list.