Here are things you can be doing until we hear details about the public comment period. In quotes are examples of what to say:
1) KEEP calling the DEA (202) 307-1000
“I am a responsible adult who consumes Kratom to improve my health and well-being and I urge you not to emergency place it into schedule 1, but to go through a rigorous public and scientific comment process instead.”
2) KEEP calling and e-mailing your congressperson and Senator (202) 224-3121. Press #1 for Senate and #2 for House. BUT! Please make sure you also call your local district office since Congress is now in recess.
For e-mails – Find your Rep – here http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
And your Senator here – http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/
Send copies of the letters (all in the files here). If they signed on to any of the letters, tell them thank you and ask if they could personally follow-up by calling the DEA directly for a response. If they didn’t sign any of the letters ask if they would be willing to send one of their own (if they have questions you can’t answer, let us know in this thread which we’ll keep bumped and we’ll have AKA or our lobbyists follow up).
3) Find out where your Congress people are going to be for public events, town halls, election events, etc. (because they are in your state campaigning right now) and SHOW UP dressed professionally (or looking sharp in one of the many #iamkratom shirts out there – no signs, these types of events don’t usually allow anyone to bring signs). Take copies of the 4 congressional letters to try and hand to them. Be prepared to ask a question about Kratom publicly or face-to-face before or after the event.
“There is a move right now by the DEA to emergency schedule Kratom, a botanical used safely throughout the world for hundreds of years to improve health and well-being, as a schedule 1 controlled substance; the most restrictive category claiming no medicinal value. Kratom helped give me my life back and is saving the lives of tens of thousands throughout the U.S. during an opioid epidemic. What’s your take on the DEA trying to schedule a plant and turn me into a felon, further mucking up our already overtaxed criminal justice system, for using something that’s drastically improved my life and the lives of hundreds of thousands of others?”
4) Start drafting what you would like to submit during the comment period. We will try and come up with some template letters.
THANKS FOLKS!
