NEWS
BY BEN RICKER
Chances
are if you’re
curious
about it, the
UO has a
class on it.
Nearly anyone can enroll in
regular UO classes through the
Community Education Program
(CEP). Visit the CEP website
for information on eligibility,
registration, and tuition.
THE DEVIL YOU DON’T KNOW
Deadly drug epidemic fails to break out
months after DEA postpones banning obscure herbal painkiller
Register for classes beginning
Monday, March 20.
Spring classes start April 3.
L
ate last year, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency tried
adding an obscure herbal leaf with narcotic effects called
kratom to its list of banned substances. Public outcry in
support of the mysterious painkiller, as well as a Septem-
ber 2016 letter penned by a small handful of U.S. senators
— including Oregon’s Ron Wyden — convinced the DEA to back
down for the time being.
Several months and a new administration later, kratom waits
in uncomfortable limbo, and users
wonder if and when the feds might
decide to crack down on the mostly
harmless Southeast Asian botanical.
“I don’t know what I’d do without
it,” says American Kratom Associa-
tion (AKA) director Susan Ash.
About five years ago, Ash moved
cross-country from Portland to live
with her parents in Norfolk, Virginia,
after a yet-to-be diagnosed case of
Lyme disease began making her life
impossible.
The pain was sometimes like
lightning, Ash says. It attacked her
joints and left her paralyzed for hours on end. For years, her life
consisted entirely of hospital visits and bed rest.
“I lost all control of my life,” she adds.
Doctors prescribed Suboxone, a synthetic opiate that many drug
treatment clinics use to wean junkies off heroin. And before long,
Ash was hooked on the highly addictive, doctor-recommended,
FDA approved pharmaceutical — which until recently was manu-
factured exclusively by the good people at Reckitt Benckiser.
A fellow Lyme disease sufferer recommended Ash give kratom
a whirl.
“I’d never heard of it,” Ash says. She thought: Why not?
Kratom changed everything, she says; her pain steadily sub-
sided, and Ash was able to kick her Suboxone addiction without
much trouble.
Ash launched the AKA in 2014 to spread awareness, encourage
kratom research and protect users from having to resort to harmful
opioid painkillers.
Months ago, when the feds came close to outlawing kratom, EW
purchased several packets of the stuff from a downtown head shop
and supplied this reporter with the recommended dosage.
It tastes like a mouthful of mildew and sawdust. And unless
you’re in an awful lot of pain, it will probably leave you feeling
pretty much the same as usual.
Kratom comes in three main varieties: some of which are said
to relax users; others produce an effect similar to drinking a strong
cup of coffee; the third type blends stimulant properties and pain
relief.
EW foisted the energizing variety on me. But even after up-
ping my intake well beyond the recommended daily amount, I still
couldn’t get a good buzz going.
The only difference coworkers noticed was that I visited their
workstations more often than usual to ask, “Do I seem okay to
you?” Aside from that and few other minor quirks, my behavior
seemed completely normal to them.
The conclusion I came to is that there can’t be much of a recre-
ational market for kratom because it tastes like filth and isn’t any
fun.
“That’s precisely our point,” Ash
says, indicating that most people
who rely on kratom for pain relief
are between 40 and 60 years old.
And many of the them have been
feeling skittish ever since the DEA
announced plans to classify it along-
side heroin and cocaine as a Sched-
ule I banned substance.
Not everyone agrees that it’s
harmless. Already banned in six
states, some argue that kratom is
linked to as many as 15 deaths over
the last two years. To determine
whether Oregon should join the pro-
hibition, state legislators are considering a bill proposed Jan. 9 that
would direct the State Board of Pharmacy to study the heretofore
unknown hazards of kratom.
The AKA looked into all alleged kratom fatalities cited by the
DEA and discovered that all cases involved other substances as
well. To date, there are no known deaths attributed conclusively to
kratom, Ash says.
The AKA favors more research and some government regula-
tion, but “people shouldn’t need a prescription to get their hands
on kratom,” Ash says.
To help nudge things in the right direction, the AKA recently
circulated a petition asking the White House not to ban kratom. In
three months, they gathered more than 26,000 signatures, which
they then sent to President Trump, who has yet to respond. Presum-
ably he has bigger fish to fry than taking measures to clamp down
on a fringy herbal pain medicine that most Americans have never
heard of.
Last October, Ash moved back to Portland, where she lives
completely independently — an accomplishment she calls the
“victory lap” to her long recovery.
Any hope that the newly elected Republican government
would pursue a states rights approach to kratom has been some-
what dampened by the new administration’s aggressive posturing
against legalized recreational cannabis, she says. “We really don’t
know what’s in store.”
If the government decides to ban kratom, Ash and other chronic
pain sufferers would have to resort to authorized painkillers, how-
ever dangerous. “And that’s not fair to us.”
There can’t be much
of a recreational
market for kratom
because it tastes like
filth and isn’t any fun.
http://cep.uoregon.edu
541-346-5614
cep@uoregon.edu
See the Class Schedule at
http://classes.uoregon.edu
EO/AA/ADA institution committed to cultural diversity.
© 2017 University of Oregon
COMMUNITY
EDUCATION
PROGRAM
Take UO courses
without formal admission
eugeneweekly.com • March 16, 2017
9