The need for logic in Kratom, CBD debates

It must be a sign I'm getting old.

As soon I think I understand the drug culture and society's approach to handling it, a deadly new substance emerges from a concert parking lot or designer nightclub, dragging its belly through our fractured social consciousness and making us question even the aspirin we take for a headache.

But Kratom and Cannabidiol (CBD) are not those drugs.

Now, picture the scene: a TV news reporter standing on the side of a rural Mississippi road, with an expensive video camera lens focused in on a tiny plastic bottle — not unlike a Five Hour Energy shot.

It's an innocent enough scene, but is apparently the next drug epidemic I was told all about on the evening news Monday night as some activists in Lowndes County seek to have Kratom banned from the county entirely — an idea the city of Columbus is also apparently considering. WCBI'S story was well-done and informative, and got me thinking.

Calling the prevalent use of Kratom an epidemic is hyperbole on my part, of course, but if you ask some, the need for action is dire.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Kratom is a tropical tree found in Southeast Asia, with two compounds found in its leaves — mitragynine and 7- -hydroxymitragynine — that interact with opioid receptors in the brain, producing sedation, pleasure, and decreasing pain, especially when users consume large amounts of the plant.

While the federal Food and Drug Administration has issued stern warnings about the use of Kratom, the agency also claimed to have identified at least 44 deaths in 2017 related to use of the substance — with at least one case being investigated as a death resulting strictly from possible use of pure Kratom.

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said about a year ago that the agency had “clear data on the increasing harms associated” with Kratom, but the evidence seems to fall flat, at least as far as negative health effects are concerned.

Do I concede that it has addictive properties? I ask what doesn't?

Upon further personal inspection of the medical records provided by the FDA to back up the different deaths, almost every instance resulting in death involved using the substance in concert with other potent drugs or alcohol.

So consider this: In a country where 17,029 people died of an overdose related to prescription opioids in 2017, and another 88,000 dying annually from alcoholrelated causes, should we really be so quick to legislate a problem that we don't fully understand?

One courageous activist — who I genuinely applaud — told local media of the nightmare her family was put through as the result of her husband's Kratom addiction. I have no reason to doubt, devalue or question the hell that family must have gone through. Addiction can be a multiheaded monster of financial, legal and emotional turmoil, with each case as complex as the next.

Addiction to any substance or action can be possible in the right set of circumstances, and I think we as a society tend to look past our own need to understand the causes of addiction so we can treat it, instead of our failed attempts to legislate the human condition.

Outlaw the substances if you have to, but anyone with any experience in these matters will agree that people will still find a way to get the drugs they crave, even if they are illegal under the harshest of penalties. So the problem is then compounded when the addict is left no choice but to become the incarcerated, then becoming the institutionalized.

I think we as a society are also quick to focus on the tangible components of drug addiction in order to find a scapegoat, something physical to focus our anger on, instead of trying to identify and address the roots of addictive behavior.

We've allowed our policymakers to cut mental health funding to the bone and while smart initiatives like pretrial diversion programs for drug offenders, championed locally by District Attorney Scott Colom, have proven successful for many, it seems we as a society are still grappling with the same age-old questions brought about as a result of addiction and substance abuse.

That's not to say the courts aren't doing what they can, rather, the responsibility must rest with us as a society.

The same cognitive dissonance over Kratom can also be seen in how CBD is treated, another organic substance