Reader: Keep kratom from FDA overreach

Pharmaceutical companies aren’t entirely to blame for the opioid crisis, and they won’t help us out of it. These companies have been preying on us for decades, putting profit before lives, but this crisis wouldn’t have been possible without the FDA’s rubber stamp of approval

According to a disturbingly telling Washington Post article, FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb worked on behalf of one company, Cephalon, to raise the quota of the addictive opioid fentanyl at the same time the prescription opioid epidemic was exploding. This is all too common in federal officials and agencies.

By giving drug companies such power to inflict harm using FDA-approved drugs and offering few affordable ways out of addiction, agencies like the FDA essentially work hand in hand with Pharma. So it’s no surprise that they’re demonizing a safe, cheap, potential solution to this epidemic.

It’s called kratom, it works, and drug companies can’t profit off it. So the FDA is on a mission to destroy it and the lives of the thousands of people it helps. A tree in the coffee family native to Southeast Asia, kratom has been used safely for centuries to combat addiction.

It has helped me immeasurably and saved hundreds of people I know with few, if any, side effects. There are no deaths attributed to kratom alone, but the FDA would have you believing there are, using blatantly false propaganda that grows more each day while real science points more and more toward it being effective and safe.

Luckily Colorado has kept this plant legal thanks to the help of Sen. Michael Bennet and Rep. Jared Polis. And just as cannabis is helping millions of people with their health and well-being, kratom should be further studied and kept safe from FDA overreach. I have seen what the FDA and Big Pharma have to offer: death and addiction. And I have the right to choose better.

— Chris Sedgwick, Colorado Springs