Laughing Lion Herbs Kratom News

Kratom news

Welcome to our NEW Kratom News section! Given all the recent news in the media, FDA, and now Denver about Kratom, we want to dispel rumors and state the truth! Check it out...

Kratom at Risk In Indonesia (NOT BANNED)

Hey guys. I wanted to make a quick statement about the current situation over in Indonesia. I have spent more than 4 years cultivating strong and honest relationships with the big boys over there. There is a bit of a hysteria sweeping across the community right now that Kratom has been banned in Indonesia and that farmers have 5 years to transition their crops to something else. This is simply not true. The health minister in Indonesia listened to the lies the FDA is screaming about Kratom and thought that they needed to ban kratom to protect the lives of innocent Americans who are dying and dropping like flies because Kratom is killing them all (LIES!). Well, we know for a fact that information is false. However, the vast majority of Indonesians support Kratom and if they actually passed the ban over there, I'm told there would be hundreds of thousands or millions of people rioting against the government over there. At this time they don't see cause for immediate concern because there is a LONG way to go before they would make any decisions. The AKA wants to send a delegation over there to help Perkindo (their version of AKA) fight this misinformation and I strongly advise everyone to donate what they can to the cause! However, don't believe the panic that people are perpetuating in social media right now. Kratom is not being banned and we are not losing our beloved plant! We need to fight, and we will win just like we did with the DEA in 2016 as long as we can pool our resources and fight!

CDC Claims 91 Deaths Related to Kratom across 27 states

According to this article: "The supplement has been linked to 91 overdose deaths in 27 states, according to the CDC. In recent years, both the Food and Drug Administration and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have issued warnings about kratom use..." However, the issue remains that in all but 7 of those deaths, illicit and other drugs were present in the bodies of the victims! And in those 7, we would guess that there were underlying health conditions (as has been proven in previous cases where people died of existing heart defect complications but Kratom was blamed because they had it in their house or in their blood. "...The people at the highest risk of kratom-involved deaths are those with a history of substance abuse. According to postmortem tests performed by the CDC, most people with kratom-involved deaths died by fentanyl and heroin overdose. These people often tested positive for multiple drugs, including prescription pain medications. It is unclear where kratom use increased their risk of overdose-related death." (source: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/kratom-counter-supplement-contributing-overdose-deaths/story?id=62393199) Here at Laughing Lion, our goal is to protect the integrity of the truth. And while the continued assault by various medical professionals, the CDC, and the FDA continues, we ask people to follow the science! And the science shows, as much as has been found, that Kratom is NOT the dangerous substance that people claim it is! These people claim that because Kratom interacts with the opioid receptors in the brain (as a partial agonist), that it must be subject to the dangers of any other opioid. See Dr. Nicole Saphier's article on Fox News this week, "...However, kratom is not a safe, benign plant. In fact, emerging data is providing strong evidence that kratom and its compounds work on the same central (brain) nervous system receptors as opioids, and therefore have the potential for addiction and abuse..." (https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/dr-nicole-saphier-what-is-kratom-and-why-is-it-being-promoted-as-a-wellness-product-to-our-kids) The issue that these highly educated and very smart people have is that they are so ingrained in the thoughts that the only thing that is safe for us to take is substances that the FDA has approved. From the time they are children, they are told by doctors that only Doctors know what's safe and best. As they grow up, they decided to attend medical school and from the moment they walk in the doors, they are indoctrinated with the belief that only substances that undergo rigorous testing and scientific research are safe because all the possible side effects have been declared and under the care of a professional doctor, the dangers are minimal and recognized. But where has that gotten us? The Big Pharmaceutical companies like Purdue Pharma who developed OxyCotin back in 1996 took a substance that was created back in 1916 by Germany (https://www.treatmentsolutions.com/blog/the-history-of-oxycontin/) and as alleged in a lawsuit currently pending against the company, they altered critical facts so they could push doctors to prescribe the dangerous and addictive drug to people in amounts that has greatly contributed to the massive Opiate Crisis we are now in! (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-opioids-litigation/family-behind-purdue-pharma-pushed-opioid-marketing-massachusetts-says-idUSKCN1P92OC) **BOTTOM LINE** Money has driven the sales of these drugs and money drives the FDA to approve these drugs! "From September 2015 to January 2016, teams of FDA officials held 70 meetings with drug company executives and lobbyists to set goals that could have far-reaching consequences for the pharmaceutical industry, the FDA, and anyone who uses or pays for prescription drugs. At issue: How the Food and Drug Administration should go about approving new drugs. The meetings, closed to the public, weren’t just talks. They were negotiations. And if the two sides didn’t reach an agreement, the FDA could find itself in a world of hurt. The agency, whose responsibilities include making sure that prescription drugs sold in the United States are safe and effective, receives almost three-quarters of its funding for that work from drug makers. In Fiscal Year 2015, the agency spent about $1.1 billion on prescription drug oversight—more specifically, those activities the agency categorizes as part of its “process for the review of human drug applications.” Congress delivered 29 percent of that money—$331.6 million. Drug companies provided the rest—$796.1 million. Over the past two decades, “user fees” paid by industry have climbed from 35 percent of the FDA’s spending on such oversight to 71 percent. The bottom line: The FDA is addicted to drug money." (Source: https://www.pogo.org/investigation/2016/12/fda-depends-on-industry-funding-money-comes-with-strings-attached/) The truth of the matter is that these Pharmaceutical companies don't want Kratom to be legal! It greatly impacts their bottom line because people stop buying their drugs and instead turn to a natural plant that they can't control, patent, and make billions of dollars on! So what can we do? We can stand up for the truth! Whenever people repeat the lies that are circulating out there, our responsibility is to counter them with truth! Some great resources you can reference are below! Stand strong and know we stand on the side of truth!

Even BETTER News Hits Today!

Friends, we have just received word from the American Kratom Association that PROVES that the FDA has been lying and obscuring the truth about Kratom! In a press release today along with a White Paper published, the AKA has revealed the atrocities committed by the FDA in the name of protecting us as Americans but instead, they have stretched the truth, covered up the facts, and blatantly lied to attempt to block Kratom.

My personal opinion is that this has been done to satisfy the Pharmaceutical Industry who wants Kratom banned across the country because in 2017 alone, the sales of Narcotic Pain Relievers dropped by 7%! This has been attributed partly to Kratom! That's hundreds of millions of dollars they are loosing to Kratom! You better believe they want it stopped and they want it stopped now!

But science and truth is winning! We will never give up the fight to prove that Kratom is a safe plant with almost zero potential for abuse (based on countless medical and scientific studies and research papers. Kratom is here to stay and so are we!

See the article below for the full story!

AMERICAN KRATOM ASSOCIATION ACCUSES FDA OF MANIPULATING, OBSCURING, AND IGNORING SCIENCE

___________________________________________

WASHINGTON, DC – August 14, 2018 – Peer-reviewed documentation concerning 44 deaths that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cited to persuade the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to place natural kratom on the Federal Government’s Schedule 1 list of illegal substances disclose errors and omissions on the part of the FDA that the American Kratom Association (AKA) claims can only be seen as “deliberate.”

In a detailed white paper released today, AKA scientists and attorneys claim, “The FDA has also misled the DEA, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) with incomplete, inaccurate, extrapolated, and distorted information on adverse events and deaths allegedly associated with the use of kratom to encourage unwarranted legislative and regulatory restrictions on kratom at the federal, state, and local government levels.”

Among the most significant claims, the AKA offers evidence of duplicated case reports, omissions of “cause of death” conclusions and inaccurate autopsy and toxicology reports, as well as redacted statements from experts contradicting FDA claims. According to AKA, the FDA reports that associate kratom use with 44 deaths are so “poorly documented they could not pass basic standards for publication in any credible scientific journal, even as a letter or comment.”

The most egregious examples cited by AKA include cases where:

• The FDA failed to adequately disclose and account for material facts from the peer-reviewed Case Report of nine deaths in Sweden that were published in 2011 in the Journal of Analytical Toxicology. That report concluded the deaths were actually the result of adulteration of kratom powder with a toxic dose of O-desmethyltramadol.

• Two deaths claimed in the documents released by the FDA are the same death reported twice (FAERS ID No. 14449343 and FAERS ID No. 14254346).

• Other deaths were from abuse of loperamide (FAERS ID Nos. 12665823 and 12665824), heroin (FAERS ID No. 174035), acetaminophen (FAERS ID No. 14554565), and other drugs or drug cocktails.

• The FDA stripped source data (FAERS ID No. 14449343) that cited U-47700 (PINK) as the primary cause of death, when kratom was listed as the fifth of six substances in the toxicology report.

• The FDA even attributed suicides (FAERS ID No. 14554565 and FAERS ID No. 12639556); a homicide, with a gunshot wound to the chest (FAERS ID No. 12639316); cardiac arrhythmia while swimming (FAERS ID No. 191303); deep vein thrombosis (FAERS ID No. 12639594), and the fall from a window (FAERS ID No. 1342166) to kratom.

“Not only is the FDA’s effort to frame kratom as a culprit in these otherwise unrelated deaths sloppy and lacking in scientific integrity, but one can only conclude that it has been done deliberately,” said Dave Herman, Chairman of the AKA. “We invite those who want the truth to go to our white paper, get the information, and join us in our demand that the FDA follow the science.”

According to the AKA, none of the FDA reported 44 deaths document any specific cause that is consistent among the cases that can be linked specifically to kratom; a vast majority of the cases document polydrug use by the decedent and, in a few cases, the possible use of adulterated kratom products. In most cases, the cumulative contributions of multiple drugs and interactions between drugs are not even considered by FDA.

“The DEA, CDC, and NIDA depend on the FDA for accurate information,” said Herman. “This misinformation has already resulted in bans on kratom in six states and in a number of local jurisdictions. Likewise, it creates a completely unjustified bias against kratom by law enforcement officers, coroners and medical examiners, and state prosecuting attorneys’ groups. We call on the FDA to make this right.”

Among measures requested by the AKA, the FDA must:

• review the FAERS database to ensure complete and accurate records of all source documents;

• reevaluate and revise its kratom-related policies based on corrected and accurate scientific evidence;

• work with the DEA, CDC, and NIDA to update policy documents to reflect accurate and unbiased assessment of the risks of kratom use;

• immediately lift the current Import Alert on kratom;

• rescind its November 14, 2017 Public Health Advisory on kratom; and,

• commence appropriate enforcement action against companies and individuals who are producing adulterated kratom products that pose a real and present danger to the public.

In addition, the AKA calls upon the DEA to reject the FDA’s 8-Factor Analysis and scheduling recommendation and return it to FDA for a full scientific reanalysis of the data and conclusions in that submission.

ABOUT AKA

The American Kratom Association (AKA), a consumer-based non-profit organization, focuses on setting the record straight about kratom and gives a voice to those who are suffering by protecting their rights to possess and consume safe and natural kratom. AKA represents millions of Americans, each of whom has a unique story to tell about the virtues of kratom and its positive effects on their lives. www.americankratom.org

MEDIA CONTACT

Benjamin May, (202) 413-0119 — bmay@policyimpact.com

VIEW WHITE PAPER HERE

FDA Issues Warning Letters to 3 Vendors Selling Kratom Illegally

If you haven't seen it yet, 3 different companies got warning letters from the FDA (https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm608447.htm) yesterday.

We are appalled that some vendors choose to make these claims and break the law! Not only that, but they also further the stance of the FDA that Kratom is dangerous and their perception that the Kratom industry is a "Wild Wild West" situation.

We absolutely stand with the FDA in this process. Kratom CANNOT be sold with any kind of claims made. The only way to legally make structured claims on a supplement is to submit an NDI notification to the FDA along with substantial medical and laboratory research. And even then it must be with their approval.

What we really need is vendors who will begin the process of getting cGMP certified and who will fully comply with all in-place FDA processes to ensure the safety and purity of the product! ANYTHING that is not done following cGMP protocols is considered "Adulterated" by the FDA and none of us can make outrageous claims about it's use!

No matter how much someone believes that a particular supplement works, if you sell it, promote it, or are involved in any way in it's manufacturing, you MUST NOT MAKE CLAIMS!

We need to work WITH THE FDA and not against them! We need to show them that the Kratom industry is willing to take a stand against companies selling Kratom illegally or at the least, is in violation of Good Manufacturing Practices. Let's make the choice today to only work with vendors who are taking those steps to ensure that Kratom doesn't get thrown out because of foolish choices by vendors doing things the wrong way!

Denver "Ban" on Kratom 11/22/17

11/20/17, the City of Denver (Environmental Health) issued a statement and ruling that within the Denver City Limits, no Kratom may be sold for Human Consumption. (See 9 News article here.) So instead of freaking out and worrying about Kratom being lost forever, let's look at this from a logical perspective. The FDA releases a warning that Kratom can be deadly and linked to 36 deaths in the last 5 years. We all know this is completely false and have plenty of evidence to show for it. American Kratom Association is issuing a legal retraction complaint to them. See info here. As a Colorado-based Kratom distributor, we are naturally very concerned about changes to Colorado laws and regulations regarding our primary product. Instead of immediately attacking the Denver Health Department, let's consider this first... If you were in their shoes with absolutely no knowledge or understanding of what Kratom has done for you, or others--the way it's changed your life and brought you back to health and functionality--one could understand, given their responsibilities, Denver Health is taking a stand they feel is warranted. The FDA, the highest authority in the land regarding supplements, drugs, etc, says "Kratom is killing people". What are you to do but be proactive and to “protect” your citizens from this “threat”. Instead of taking a bold and completely reversed stance of banning Kratom for sale completely, they decide to issue a ruling that Kratom MUST be labeled and sold as a non-consumable. but this warning along with a statement that the herb could be very dangerous or fatal is now required on every package... ***BUT it's STILL LEGAL*** I don't blame them at all! Hey, they are doing their jobs! Instead of attacking them, we need to contact them and tell them our own stories. Like my own. A minor injury turned into 18 months of chronic pain, disability, loss of income and a job, bankruptcy. They need to know how the medications I was given by doctors never helped and instead changed me as a person from a fun-loving father of 2 boys to a negative, depressed man in pain. All I wanted was to lie around in bed all day. I couldn't feel a single emotion other than sadness. After 18 months, I got off all those medications and while the pain never went away, the emotions, the depression, the "zombie" I had become all gradually faded and I began to be myself again but it was slow going. I found out about Kratom thanks to a dear friend of mine I met while at the Mayo clinic and it provided me with hope I hadn't had before that things could be better! So what do they need to hear? They need to hear from us about the overwhelming evidence from our own experiences that kratom is not some horrible plant that will kill us all, but instead an herb of healing, health, and restoration! How do you submit your stories? First, please visit the AKA page for the national petitions. Then, if you reside in Colorado, please take the time to contact the Denver Health Department and file your complaint about the ruling but do so with respect and give them the benefit of the doubt that they don't know what they are doing here. They are only doing what they think is right. Don't attack, be respectful. Tell them how Kratom changed your life! From their website: Consumers or businesses with questions or concerns about kratom can contact DEH’s Public Health Inspections Division at phicomments@denvergov.org or 720-913-1311. We all know that kratom is under attack again. Instead of crying out in despair, we need to once again unite against this attack and take it down again! The only way we can do that is by being proactive and contact those in authority. Speak well, write clearly, show them how they are on the wrong side on this matter. We will win the day. The battle for Kratom legality will be won! We will NOT loose Kratom. Of that I am certain!

FDA Kratom Warning 11/16/17

By Now You've All Heard about the FDA Alert... View it Here. But what does it mean to the Kratom community? Most if not all the news outlets are crying out that the War on Kratom is coming again, that the FDA is attacking and going to bad our beloved plant! But is it? Let me state that I'm not a fortune teller. I only write what I believe, what I can verify, and what I believe I hear God tell me. And I'll always tell you which one it is. Q. Is Kratom in Danger? A. I don't think so... and why? If you read the FDA report, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb states the perceived dangers of Kratom which we all believe to be completely false. He states that no one should consider Kratom safe and should consider it dangerous... which we also disagree with. However, the key point in the entire news brief is this: "While we remain open to the potential medicinal uses of kratom, those uses must be backed by sound-science and weighed appropriately against the potential for abuse. They must be put through a proper evaluative process that involves the DEA and the FDA. To those who believe in the proposed medicinal uses of kratom, I encourage you to conduct the research that will help us better understand kratom’s risk and benefit profile, so that well studied and potentially beneficial products can be considered. In the meantime, based on the weight of the evidence, the FDA will continue to take action on these products in order to protect public health." Dr. Gottlieb is not stating that the FDA is going to take additional action against Kratom. He is stating that they remain open to the possibility of it's medicinal uses should it be proven to be beneficial. People, the FDA, while a pain in our sides and likely motivated more by corruption and money than the good of Americans, is stating that they are open to the possibility. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but let's look at the facts: DEA retracted it's attempt to place Kratom under Schedule 1 classification for the first time in history This retraction was motivated by the overwhelming response of Americans but even more so but the overwhelming response of our Congress members who support Kratom research and requested that it not be banned until truly studied. Although 100% non-admissible for the FDA, I believe that Kratom is not a harmful plant. Science will support us: The current research shows absolutely stunning evidence that Kratom holds very little risk to the American people. Further studies that are morally performed will show the same (this I have completely faith in) The FDA knows that it would be political suicide to attempt another ban without proof of it's dangers which they cannot fabricate! Although Dr. Gottlieb attempts to quote data that makes Kratom look dangerous, they have absolutely no ground on which to stand. Do you really think that if they had REAL PROOF of it's dangers that it would still be legal? No!