Panel hears from kratom supporters, detractors
“It’s been a year since someone told me about kratom,” says former Rossville resident John Butler. “I’m thankful every day. It’s changed my life.”
Butler says he’s lived with severe pain since he was a child. “I was seven when I realized other people’s feet don’t hurt all the time. I spent a year in leg braces when I was three, which is when the pain began.”
Butler, a building contractor, says numerous injuries over the years, including a fall from a 32-foot roof, a screw through an eye and severe arthritis resulted in 20 years of consuming 8-14 aspirin a day in addition to daily doses of prescription narcotic painkillers that resulted in dependency.
“Because of kratom, I’m off all of that,” Butler says. “It relieves my pain and I don’t have cravings for it like I did for the narcotic prescription.”
But many people don’t view kratom the way Butler does. Catoosa County Coroner Vanita Hullander wants to see the substance that comes from the leaves of a tree grown in southeast Asian countries studied by the Food and Drug Administration and restricted until it is. Her efforts have started close to home.
Hullander ap - proached Georgia District 3 Representative Dewayne Hill of Catoosa County with her concerns. Hill responded by forming a committee to study the issue. State Sen. Jeff Mullis of Chickamauga started a committee for the same purpose in the upper house and the two joined to invite medical experts, representatives from the kratom industry and others to testify.
Mullis, who serves as chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, represents the District 53, which includes Catoosa, Walker, Dade counties and portions of Chattooga County.
The House Study Committee on Risks Associated with Kratom held its first meeting in October 2018 and two subsequent meetings in December. Rep. Hill says information from the meetings is being organized and will
Where does kratom come from?
come before the committee soon for further consideration.
Speakers at the committee’s first meeting included Jack Henningfield, PH.D., vice president of Research, Health Policy and Abuse Liability, Pinney Associates; Charles M. Haddow, Senior Fellow in Public Policy with the American Kratom Association and former chief of staff (under Reagan) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Michael Mcpherson, Governmental Relations Associate with the Georgia Municipal Association; Catoosa County Coroner Vanita Hullander; and Georgia State Representative Vernon Jones (District 91).