I am skeptical though since I presume their capsules are much stronger than natural kratom powder. The linked YouTube video seems to say that Feel Free intentionally includes higher concentrations of 7-OH. So a bit confused.
I hope the Feel Free does experience the crack down. Seems like someone just needs to test the Feel Free product's 7-OH concentration level, and if it exceeds 0.05%, as it likely does, the ban will apply.
It's a not-opioid that just plays with the opiate receptors in your brain and can be purchased in a concentrated form at your nearest gas station in a lot of US States.
My opinion is that long term daily kratom use is terrible for your health, but it doesn't carry an overdose risk so it should stay legal and the decision to use or not should be up to the user.
Actually reasonable decision from the DEA under RFK. Scheduling concentrated/semi-synthetic kratom products while leaving the weaker leaf-based products alone is a good compromise to reduce harm without criminalizing kratom (which has beneficial uses for opioid recovery and maintenance therapy) in general.
Raw leaf Kratom seems to be helpful for some with what I would consider a manageable and acceptable addiction danger. You can get hooked on it, realize there is an issues and cut back or come off it without it destroying your life. I see no reason to make it illegal. I've even seen is used by people to get off "harder" Kratom concentrates. Sorta like how we regulate beer and wine a bit differently than whiskey... same drug, same abuse potential in theory but massive abuse difference in practice.
You have anything backing up the last bit? My intuition/life experience doesn't lead me to believe an alcoholic preferring whiskey is particularly worse off than an alcoholic preferring beer, nor that whiskey is more likely to lead one to alcoholism than beer. Claude surfaced this review tending to agree with me, with the exception of acute overdose being more of a risk with the hard stuff.
My intuition tells me most people can't put down whiskey like they can beer. My guess is both of these are actual relevant things that affect behaviors, but I have no idea which is stronger.
Hard liquor is absorbed faster than beer which leads to a stronger rush effect. It's similar to snorting vs shooting cocaine. When the effect hits faster, the psychological association between the stimuli and the effect (sensitization) becomes stronger.
This effect has been demonstrated with rat studies using cocaine:
It's easier to drink more units of alcohol faster when it's more concentrated, and not full of bubbles.
I don't think its so much that it's absorbed faster than it's just physically possible to drink 200 ml of liquor faster than it is to drink 1600ml of beer.
I’m not fully cognizant of the interaction between FDA and DEA, but I would’ve thought that following FDA’s announcement last year, kratom had already been outlawed.
The FDA and the DEA have no connection to each other.
The DEA is a law enforcement agency that aims to fight illegal drug trafficking. the FDA is regulatory agency that aims to ensure the food and medicine legally sold in the US is safe.
The DEA enforces FDA regulations though through criminal and civil prosecution of those using otherwise DEA-legal and properly prescribed substances that are not FDA approved. Except for medical marijuana which had specific executive order to place state-licensed cannabis exempted from FDA regulation, a legally prescribed controlled substance becomes a DEA enforceable illegal substance when it is dispensed without FDA approval of the material.
This is mostly incorrect. The DEA enforces the Controlled Substances Act and the list of scheduled drugs, not FDA regulations.
If you are out there using e.g some experimental cancer drug that hasn't been FDA approved yet, the DEA isn't going to stop you. Their mission is to stop recreational use of drugs that get you high.
FDA approval and regulation is how you end up with a legally dispensed controlled substance of a prescription. If you manage to get the controlled substances from a non-FDA approved source what you have is a pile of illegal controlled substances.
They are not going to give a shit about most cancer drugs because they're not controlled substances.
Theres a guy Grant Harding on YT etc. who sends gas station pills for testing and some of the things he finds are scary. Seriously addictive drugs being sold OTC with no meaningful consumer warning or guardrails
Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances in existence and it is sold everywhere. If governments actually cared about addiction risk, a whole lot of things would have to disappear from normal stores.
This was happening during the early 2000s, though in more "reputable" places (like nutrition and supplement stores; different "drugs" and chemicals, though). Not really surprised it is still going on in the weird little label producers.
Salvia is great if you're in the right setting and headspace. Its been years since I used it, but I'm glad I did. There's one trip in particular that I sometimes think about and has remained a meaningful part of my life.
I know I'm an outlier in that regard. It's not the peak/thinking I'm a color I find useful, it's the coming back to reality afterwards. Salvia is an incredibly potent perception cleanser. After peak, as your default perceptions slide back into place you can catch them in the act of taking hold again. I've caught myself 'putting back on' pieces of myself I thought I could never change/always thought was unquestionable/absolute.
This is the only sane and reasonable thing RFK has done while in office, but also possibly ever. You can't ignore that he's a completely insane dug addict.
It's kind of amazing that this took so long. On the other hand, this is just chapter 3025223 of the failed war on drugs and we can be confident that people will find something worse as an alternative.
About 10 years ago, when it was less well-known, you could find better raw leaf powder and it was helping people get off actual opiates.
IIRC there's an effect where the actual chemicals get stronger for older leaves. The bigger market has caused the harvest period to shorten, making the powder worse quality, and creating room for the concentrated extracts and stuff like 7-Oh.
Tragedy of the commons I guess. I knew people who started taking way too much, but also people who were able to use it responsibly. People say "let doctors prescribe", but that ignores how in order for that to happen, a pharma company will need something they can patent, pay for the years of testing, get sole control over it for a period, and years later a generic can come about. All when you can dry a leaf and use it as-is. There should be room for plants to be consumed. Screw it, enjoy poppy, cannabis, kratom, tobacco, etc.
It probably shouldn't be sold in gas stations but it probably also shouldn't be outright banned, as we'll just get new, more dangerous analogues.
> People say "let doctors prescribe", but that ignores how in order for that to happen, a pharma company will need something they can patent, pay for the years of testing, get sole control over it for a period, and years later a generic can come about.
Is there not universies that could just do this research on the leaf itself?
They didn't have to include women in drug trials until 1993.
I'm not going "science isn't always right!" but it can absolutely be a racket with major blindspots and regulatory capture that ensures cures and treatments can only reach patients if it makes sufficient profit.
Kratom didn't just sprout up one day in 2014. It's been used as a form of traditional medicine in its home regions longer than there's been an FDA.
It's one thing to say "I think chemical compounds marketed as medicine should be given rigorous study", but a whole other thing to declare classes of unrefined plants illegal because not enough fingers are in the pie yet.
I'm convinced half the reason we don't have realistic cannabis regulation in this country is because it grows like a weed and cannot be controlled to the extent it would need to be in order for companies to build up full control.
Here in Canada you're not allowed to 3d print a modded grip for the rifle you're not allowed to buy, but in the USA you can get OPIOIDS at a GAS STATION! ... things are definitely different down there.
Kratom is a leaf that is primarily farmed in Asia which contains the active ingredient Mitragynine, which has some very mild partial-agonist opioid effects. When kratom is consumed, your liver converts a very small amount to a MUCH more potent molecule called 7-hydroxymitragynine. As with all natural drugs, some asshats in a lab decided to figure out how to create the latter molecule semi-synthetically and in bulk. They pressed them into pills and sell them in head shops and some gas stations. It's pretty addictive, nasty stuff.
He's an odd guy who likes to investigate some really dodgy stuff. And I suspect many here on HN would appreciate him.
That led to 7-OH showing up in my feed at some point. In a nutshell, it's the strongest of the active compounds in the kratom plant, that binds to opioid receptors. 7-OH is the marketing name for the alkaloid 7-hydroxymitragynine that is being refined from kratom. It's not clear to me if it's simply extracted, or as some quick research suggests, it might also be a chemical alteration of the more commonly occurring compound in kratom mitragynine.
Anyway, this stuff looks super habit forming, and, of course, the refined version is that much more addictive.
I don't usually agree with prohibition, but 7OH is the kind of drug that spirals into a self destructive addiction VERY quickly. Most opioids require using for a number of weeks before you start to develop enough physical dependence to bring about withdrawal. 7OH has this weird withdrawal-like crash after even a single use that makes the user immediately feel terrible and often they seek more to make it go away. It's like the crack of the opioid world. On top of that, tolerance builds extremely quickly. Glad to see it go.
Ah yeah surely banning more substances will be the end of the problem this time! It definitely won't just push anyone who got hooked on this non-lethal opioid towards unregulated black markets filled with lethal fentanyl...
Fun fact, this is one of two """temporary""" opioid schedulings happening right now. The DEA is also banning 5,6-Dichloro Desmethylchlorphine (SR-17018), which has minimal to no recreational value and is the current most promising breakthrough therapy for opioid withdrawals. It is hard for me to read the combination of these two bans as anything but active malice.
> It is hard for me to read the combination of these two bans as anything but active malice.
Reading the document...
> In recent years, online forum users have begun to discuss recreational use of these four synthetic opioids and commonly compared these four synthetic opioids to other traditionally abused opioids, such as morphine and fentanyl (schedule II substances). However, unlike these two drugs that have FDA-approval for use in specific medical treatments, the four synthetic opioids have no currently approved medical use and, based on positive identifications of these four substances in forensic drug exhibits and toxicology samples, are likely to be trafficked and abused similarly to other synthetic opioids, such as brorphine (schedule I).
Do you trust the DEA, especially under this administration, to be a reliable narrator?
I would strongly recommend doing your own research, because I cannot even begin to tell you how many distinct accounts I have read of people _finally_ getting through opioid withdrawals using SR-17018 for decidedly non-recreational purposes
One of the big dangers I've heard of with 7-Oh is it seems like treatment centers don't really know how to treat withdrawal from it, which I've heard is extremely rough.
You can't treat it with opioid agonist therapy (buprenorphine, methadone, ...) to suppress the withdrawals like you would with most other cases of opioid dependency?
Then, fuck all the kratom vendors that absolutely irresponsibly market their products.
I've used kratom for 10 years for pain management and it was my best option at the time.
Drugs should not be illegal -- they should be regulated, for purity and for truth in advertising (in the case of kratom making it crystal clear that addiction is inevitable with regular constant use.
I can't agree more. Addiction treatment is expensive and out of reach for people who, lets say, aren't part of a political dynasty, and the money we dump into the war on drugs could fund free rehab for people who want to get better.
And Yeah, I experimented with Kratom for stress/anxiety/sleep problems. It sucks. Your tolerance increases rapidly, and at the rate I was taking it, withdrawals weren't that bad, but it wasn't fun either.
Our country loves to let unregulated & addictive drugs flood into the market, let people become dependent on them, pull the rug by making them illegal, and then arrest them for trying to comply with their addiction. Destroy their lives, cripple their families, send them to prison, get cheap labor. The American way.
It's the lack of the precautionary principle and regulation. Not only that, it lets things be legal and then requires victims to prove their harm was specifically linked to that substance or product. It's Russian roulette beta testing without informed consent.
It is insane that the people responsible for policing drugs get to decide what drugs are illegal. That's like letting the police decide if something is a crime or not. It's completely antithetical to democracy and the rule-of-law.
I am forever indebted to Luc Besson for directing Léon: The Professional, the most sympathetic and realistic portrayal of DEA agents, headed by none other than Gary Oldman.
I mean, considering that drugs and the war on drugs was only tangential to the storyline of this film, Besson succeeded in catching all viewers in a morally conflicted web. Can anyone identify the "good side" or innocents in this story?
95 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 50.1 ms ] threadhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLObpcBR2yw
I am skeptical though since I presume their capsules are much stronger than natural kratom powder. The linked YouTube video seems to say that Feel Free intentionally includes higher concentrations of 7-OH. So a bit confused.
I hope the Feel Free does experience the crack down. Seems like someone just needs to test the Feel Free product's 7-OH concentration level, and if it exceeds 0.05%, as it likely does, the ban will apply.
It has opioid-like addiction tendencies.
Lots of people who used kratom to wean themselves off opioids are now addicted to 7-OH. This includes many people over the age of 30.
I mean, they did specifically say it was their opinion.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3888958/
1. The quantity of alcohol consumed per occasion is most strongly associated with harms.
and
2. "The more alcohol was drunk per occasion, the higher the proportion of it which was drunk in the form of spirits"
The choice of beverage and how much was drunk was more dependent on cultural, social, and other factors.
My intuition tells me it's physically more difficult to consume more alcohol from a lower-strength beverage.
This effect has been demonstrated with rat studies using cocaine:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-9568.2005...
I don't think its so much that it's absorbed faster than it's just physically possible to drink 200 ml of liquor faster than it is to drink 1600ml of beer.
Coca : cocaine :: kratom : the stuff that just got listed, right?
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/public-health-focus/fda-and-...
I’m not fully cognizant of the interaction between FDA and DEA, but I would’ve thought that following FDA’s announcement last year, kratom had already been outlawed.
The FDA can say you can't sell it as a supplement or food. But they can't stop you from possessing it or selling it as a chemical.
When the DEA schedules it, it is illegal to possess or sell in any capacity.
The DEA is a law enforcement agency that aims to fight illegal drug trafficking. the FDA is regulatory agency that aims to ensure the food and medicine legally sold in the US is safe.
If you are out there using e.g some experimental cancer drug that hasn't been FDA approved yet, the DEA isn't going to stop you. Their mission is to stop recreational use of drugs that get you high.
They are not going to give a shit about most cancer drugs because they're not controlled substances.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRZqHzDG_c8
Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances in existence and it is sold everywhere. If governments actually cared about addiction risk, a whole lot of things would have to disappear from normal stores.
All the cannabinoid analogs are a good example too, people just want to get high.
I do miss salvia extracts though. Being able to pick that up in a head shop was nice before it got banned.
About 10 years ago, when it was less well-known, you could find better raw leaf powder and it was helping people get off actual opiates.
IIRC there's an effect where the actual chemicals get stronger for older leaves. The bigger market has caused the harvest period to shorten, making the powder worse quality, and creating room for the concentrated extracts and stuff like 7-Oh.
Tragedy of the commons I guess. I knew people who started taking way too much, but also people who were able to use it responsibly. People say "let doctors prescribe", but that ignores how in order for that to happen, a pharma company will need something they can patent, pay for the years of testing, get sole control over it for a period, and years later a generic can come about. All when you can dry a leaf and use it as-is. There should be room for plants to be consumed. Screw it, enjoy poppy, cannabis, kratom, tobacco, etc.
It probably shouldn't be sold in gas stations but it probably also shouldn't be outright banned, as we'll just get new, more dangerous analogues.
Is there not universies that could just do this research on the leaf itself?
Pharma companies have to apply for official blessings, just the same as universities would have to.
However, taxpayers do not want to spend money on expensive trials to prove efficacy.
With no evidence of efficacy that the aforementioned expensive years of testing/trials provide.
I'm not going "science isn't always right!" but it can absolutely be a racket with major blindspots and regulatory capture that ensures cures and treatments can only reach patients if it makes sufficient profit.
Kratom didn't just sprout up one day in 2014. It's been used as a form of traditional medicine in its home regions longer than there's been an FDA.
It's one thing to say "I think chemical compounds marketed as medicine should be given rigorous study", but a whole other thing to declare classes of unrefined plants illegal because not enough fingers are in the pie yet.
I'm convinced half the reason we don't have realistic cannabis regulation in this country is because it grows like a weed and cannot be controlled to the extent it would need to be in order for companies to build up full control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z5ixJIqbGY&t=267s
He's an odd guy who likes to investigate some really dodgy stuff. And I suspect many here on HN would appreciate him.
That led to 7-OH showing up in my feed at some point. In a nutshell, it's the strongest of the active compounds in the kratom plant, that binds to opioid receptors. 7-OH is the marketing name for the alkaloid 7-hydroxymitragynine that is being refined from kratom. It's not clear to me if it's simply extracted, or as some quick research suggests, it might also be a chemical alteration of the more commonly occurring compound in kratom mitragynine.
Anyway, this stuff looks super habit forming, and, of course, the refined version is that much more addictive.
Fun fact, this is one of two """temporary""" opioid schedulings happening right now. The DEA is also banning 5,6-Dichloro Desmethylchlorphine (SR-17018), which has minimal to no recreational value and is the current most promising breakthrough therapy for opioid withdrawals. It is hard for me to read the combination of these two bans as anything but active malice.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/07/01/2026-13...
Reading the document...
> In recent years, online forum users have begun to discuss recreational use of these four synthetic opioids and commonly compared these four synthetic opioids to other traditionally abused opioids, such as morphine and fentanyl (schedule II substances). However, unlike these two drugs that have FDA-approval for use in specific medical treatments, the four synthetic opioids have no currently approved medical use and, based on positive identifications of these four substances in forensic drug exhibits and toxicology samples, are likely to be trafficked and abused similarly to other synthetic opioids, such as brorphine (schedule I).
I would strongly recommend doing your own research, because I cannot even begin to tell you how many distinct accounts I have read of people _finally_ getting through opioid withdrawals using SR-17018 for decidedly non-recreational purposes
https://www.reddit.com/r/recoverywithoutAA/comments/1t5yzoe/... https://www.reddit.com/r/recoverywithoutAA/comments/1t5yzoe/... https://www.reddit.com/r/SR17018/comments/1unksbn/my_experie... https://www.reddit.com/r/withdrawl/comments/1rk2ohi/sr17018_... ...
Then, fuck all the kratom vendors that absolutely irresponsibly market their products.
I've used kratom for 10 years for pain management and it was my best option at the time.
Drugs should not be illegal -- they should be regulated, for purity and for truth in advertising (in the case of kratom making it crystal clear that addiction is inevitable with regular constant use.
And Yeah, I experimented with Kratom for stress/anxiety/sleep problems. It sucks. Your tolerance increases rapidly, and at the rate I was taking it, withdrawals weren't that bad, but it wasn't fun either.
This time AKA is lobbying FOR this ban, as 7oh gives kratom a really bad name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on:_The_Professional
I mean, considering that drugs and the war on drugs was only tangential to the storyline of this film, Besson succeeded in catching all viewers in a morally conflicted web. Can anyone identify the "good side" or innocents in this story?