Let’s prevent the feds from jeopardizing veteran addiction recovery 

During my time in uniform, I observed firsthand servicemembers and veterans who returned from service with injuries and chronic pain. Unfortunately, due to these issues many have become dependent on dangerous opioids for relief and sadly, many will wind up as another of the 80,000 opioid overdose deaths per year in the United States.

One of the tools and resources many veterans have used to quit their opioid dependence, manage pain, improve mood and focus, and get their lives back on track has been through controlled use of a pure, unadulterated kratom product. For many, it is literally a miracle solution keeping them from a downward spiral of addiction and destruction.

But today, the recovery of millions of veterans is threatened by an overreaching federal government. Three times in the last decade, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has attempted to force kratom into Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act, a drastic action that would essentially criminalize the use of the supplement nationwide and harm countless Americans who have benefited from kratom for decades. The FDA, which has a long-standing bias against any supplement that is not a pharmaceutical that can profit Big Pharma and their own budget, has pushed for kratom to be labelled a Controlled Substance by misstating the science, ignoring kratom’s long history of safe use, and falsely claiming kratom has the same effects as classic opioids. 

I am introducing a bill in the House to beat back this threat to criminalize the millions of Americans who have used kratom to get off dangerous opioids and improve their lives. The Federal Clarity for Kratom Consumers Act would protect the supplement from federal overreach and reclassification as a dangerous drug, while ensuring the safety of the product to provide consumers with a properly manufactured supplement they can rely on.

In their relentless campaign to get kratom reclassified as a dangerous drug, the FDA has relied on three fallacious and thoroughly debunked objections to its widespread use: that kratom is unsafe, that it is highly addictive, and that it has no approved medical use. Even former HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir felt compelled to call out the FDA for relying on “disappointingly poor evidence and data and a failure to consider the overall public health” in coming to such a baseless conclusion. It is rare for a top-ranking HHS official to criticize the FDA for biased, shoddy work, but in this case the unsupported conclusions were so egregious that Giroir felt it necessary to publicly criticize them. Likewise, current HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra acknowledged substantial “knowledge gaps” regarding kratom and that “kratom-involved overdose deaths have occurred after use of adulterated kratom products or taking kratom with other substances.” 

These claims about deaths associated with kratom have been reviewed by experts and found to be entirely without basis in fact. Kratom simply does not cause the respiratory suppression that is associated with overdose death. Additionally, the FDA is completely mistaken in asserting that kratom is dangerously addictive. The data shows relatively low abuse potential as compared to morphine-like opioids, stimulants, and other drugs of abuse. While kratom has not been approved for medical use, the same is true for tens of thousands of foods, dietary ingredients, botanical supplements, and dietary supplements currently available to U.S. consumers, many of which are regularly used to self-medicate by consumers to maintain their health and well-being.  

Singling out kratom for criminalization would be an egregious abuse, particularly given this supplement’s proven utility as a way of lessening the use of dangerous opioids responsible for an epidemic of death and addiction. 

The Federal Clarity for Kratom Consumers Act is a good first step to protect Americans from overreaching federal government regulators, the same ones who looked the other way during the opioid epidemic.  

Jack Bergman is a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general and currently represents Michigan’s 1st District.