Over the past decade the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and mainstream media have repeatedly attacked Kratom, calling for Kratom to be banned and saying that it is killing Americans. However, the fact of the matter is that there has never been a death in history that has been scientifically proven to be due to Kratom.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) analyzed a database of 27,338 overdose deaths between July 2016 and December 2017, and out of these 27,338 overdose deaths, 152 cases tested positive for Kratom in post-mortem blood tests.
However, out of these 152 cases, 99 tested positive for Fentanyl, 50 tested positive for Heroin, 34 tested positive for Benzodiazepines, 30 tested positive for prescription opioids, 28 tested positive for Cocaine, 19 tested positive for Alcohol, and 13 tested positive for Methamphetamine. These numbers add up to more than 152 cases, since out of the 152 ‘Kratom-related deaths’, many victims actually had multiple dangerous street drugs in their system.
The CDC determined that a mere 7 out of the 152 cases tested positive solely for Kratom, with the major caveat that other drugs were not tested for, such as dissociatives and research chemicals.
Ultimately, the CDC could not even find a single case where Kratom can truly be confirmed as the cause of death.
This finding is backed up by data from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which found that between 2011 and 2017 only 11 deaths in the National Poison Data System were associated with Kratom exposure, and 9 of those deaths involved alcohol, benzodiazepines, fentanyl, and cocaine. The remaining two deaths cannot be confirmed to be due to Kratom, since not every drug was tested for, and pre-existing medical conditions were not accounted for.
The reality is that Kratom is remarkably safe, especially when considering that drugs cause roughly 70,000 overdose deaths per year according to the CDC.
Further, there is no doubt that Kratom is actually saving lives. Opiates and synthetic opioids account for roughly 40,000 to 50,000 of the 70,000 drug overdose deaths per year in the United States, and Kratom is well-known for helping people to quit synthetic opioids and opiates.
There is science to back this up as detailed in a previous article on Kratom Cafe. Essentially, synthetic opioids and opiates recruit the intracellular protein beta-arrestin-2, which suppresses norepinephrine and leads to respiratory suppression, which ultimately leads to the risk of dying from the lungs shutting down. On the other hand, Kratom’s alkaloids do not effectively recruit beta-arrestin-2, and therefore do not cause respiratory depression, and thus cannot cause respiratory failure.
Ultimately, the statistics and science show that Kratom is a much safer alternative to synthetic opioids and opiates, and the reality is that every person who switches from synthetic opioids and opiates to Kratom is potentially a life that is saved. Therefore, Kratom is actually quite beneficial for society and is literally saving lives, and hyped up negative reports that Kratom is dangerous/deadly are completely false.
On a final note, readers may wonder why government institutions like the FDA would announce Kratom is deadly, without mentioning that the ‘kratom-related deaths’ which they are referencing actually involved deadly drugs like fentanyl, heroin, meth, and cocaine. It seems the only logical answer is that the FDA was maliciously trying to get Kratom banned in order to protect the interests of Big Pharma. Indeed, the FDA has strong ties with Big Pharma, especially since most of the FDA’s funding comes from approving new drugs for the pharmaceutical industry.
Essentially, Big Pharma sees Kratom as competition, since pain patients and people with opioid dependence can take Kratom instead of the synthetic opioids that Big Pharma pushes. Therefore, Kratom cuts into the profits of pharmaceutical companies.
Therefore, it is possible that the FDA’s war on Kratom is merely an attempt to increase the profits of Big Pharma by eliminating Kratom. If the FDA and Big Pharma were successful, pain patients and opioid dependent patients would have no choice besides dangerous and deadly synthetic opioids and opiates. Essentially, Big Pharma and the FDA seem to be choosing profits over lives, and this will be explored further in a future article on Kratom Cafe.