Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine calls for ban of kratom:

In a press release on Monday, DeWine called kratom an “imminent public health risk,” citing more than 200 overdose deaths in the state since 2019 where kratom was identified as a contributing factor. 

The only people this will help are real drug dealers, not the people who overdosed after relapsing onto real drugs and just so happened to have a bag of kratom in the room when they were found.

I recently wrote about how SSRIs saved my life. Well, kratom was the other half of that story. Without it, I highly doubt I would’ve gotten clean so fast, or possibly at all. It’s not a party drug. It’s a plant that happens to work on opiate receptors in a very mild way compared to actual opiates, so it’s a godsend if you want to get clean without taking more dangerous shit like Suboxone or methadone.

It definitely has some potential for abuse, but it’s not even remotely as harmful as the real thing. This is like outlawing nicotine gum and recommending 30 cigars a day for harm reduction.