recent jon oliver last week tonight segment on kratom and the wider 7-oh stuff.

Gas Station Drugs: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRZqHzDG_c8

> John Oliver discusses the sprawling industry of “gas station drugs” – a world of questionable supplements and boner pills – which is posing a risk to the public by putting underregulated substances over the counter, and, more importantly, could prevent people from saving up for a Honda Civic.

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.

> but my most common use is actually ADHD treatment

Glad it's working out for you. My partner's brother had been trying to do the same and it has completely changed him for the worse. Blown up his job, marriage, relationship with his young children, and he's damned fortunate that his siblings were raised better than me 'cause if it were my brother we'd be done already.

Adderall had always worked fine for him but we're living in a world where it's exceedingly difficult to keep a Schedule II drug prescription active and fulfilled.

> This is a very overblown assertion about kratom. I've heard of people getting addicted, but no one I've known personally has ever had any issues.

My brother in law has a horrible kratom addiction. He now lives in a car with no insurance.

> I have been using kratom almost daily for about a decade

Hmm...

> Voters tend to get what they want

I wish that was true. In the case of tobacco and alcohol, there's enough monied interests to ensure it would never be illegal.

So this defines the classic simple argument about the issue: alcohol and tobacco are dangerous and other than a weird House episode, have no medical value, and yet society has decided that some dangerous drugs are ok, because the right people are making money from it.

Propaganda has effectively sold the War on Drugs as "protecting people", but it's never been about that -- it's about enabling tools of oppression.

You've never been to Japan then, have you?

To be fair, it is a relatively weak one that people claim has medicinal benefits

But the prison sentence once caught is much shorter in Canada.

Do people normally have sources on their opinions?

I mean, they did specifically say it was their opinion.

I am quite familiar with it. It’s supposedly fermented leaf. Either way the impact is similar, and nothing like the natural leaf in effect or potency. Fermentation is its own form of chemical alteration.

It’s certainly not ground up leaf put into a water bottle as implied.

Prescribing opioids in the US is heavily monitored and scrutinized now. Doctors (and NPs, of which my mother is one) have to document the justification, meet state law restrictions, verify the prescription drug monitoring checks with their state, and complete the EHR workflows[†] before they can send in the prescription. There are more checks after that too that the pharmacist has to complete, and the insurance company will have oversight checks they'll do as well.

Not saying people can't or won't get addicted to the drugs prescribed by doctors, but there's a lot more checks and oversight to it (these days) than there is for kratom right now.

[†] At least in my mother's case, their EHR system will also flag opioid prescriptions for review by a board.

Official blessings come from government officials (such as those working at the offices of the Food and Drug Administration), not pharma companies.

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.

GNC used to sell freaking GHB in the 80s and early 90s!

you miss salvia extract??? everyone i know who has done it(myself included) their response was "never doing that again!"

Everything in moderation. I know a few successful adults who have tried crack. Personally, I'd never want to try it but people can do what they want. I've been around people high on powder cocaine a few times and they were incredibly annoying.

This is the proper response. I'm sure heroin feels really really really good. The amount of addicts in this thread defending their addiction is surprising.

PS: Is that a Mr. Show reference?

Paragraph A,not paragraph B applies to actual kratom leaf.

I find it interesting when traveling.

I remember traveling to mexico and being surprised.

Giant "Marlboro Man" billboards.

Television advertisements for hard alcohol.

but what was also funny was Coca-Cola ads always had something like "Siempre come frutas y verduras" (Always eat fruits and vegetables)

(nowadays mexican food labeling is even more specific, saying stuff like "excess calories" or "excess sugars" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_labeling_in_Mexico )

When I was a kid, there were cigarette vending machines.

I am not that old.

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.

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:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-9568.2005...

I read the article and it's a bit tricky to tease out but the negative association with spirits does exist. To summarize:

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.

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 experimental cancer drugs because they're not controlled substances.

So are most OTC drugs. Doesn't change the fact that you can get them everywhere. And long term nicotine use causes dependence similar to heroin.

Also you can just walk in a farmer's field, pick a mushroom out of a cow patty and boom - you're high AF! Someone should regulate cow shit, there's little to no control over it!

This is always mentioned when people talk about addictive substances being widespread. However, I think the key thing to think about isn't whether somethings addictive or not, but if said addiction comes with significant negative consequences/attributes. I don't think you'll find many people saying Caffeine is GOOD for you, but it just doesn't have significant negative outcomes like Tobacco.

Huh, i should look at this. I've been an aggressive drinker for most of my adult life (2 pots a day at my height), but for kicks i decided to cut all caffeine for about 9 months. No real issues aside from very short term headaches, though even those i mitigated by gradually moving down in quantity.

Aside from the headaches what addictive effects are you referencing?

And sugar

Your last sentence is non-sequitur.

The health implications of sugar consumption have no relationship to it being addictive (or not).

Different things are bad in different ways and need to be handled differently. You can’t functionally just go “both can be addictive and kill people therefore your argument is moot.” You’ve removed all qualifiers and context.

To compare them is to respond to a discussion on the threat of guns with some point about people weaponizing their cars and running people over because both can cause bodily harm. I think we can both agree that comparison strips all context and nuance from most conversations about guns OR cars and makes it difficult to talk about either in productive ways outside of the narrow/niche discussions.

TL;DR: this comparison spikes the conversation. Sugar and kratom do not present enough analogous health issues or enough of the same types risks to those around you to warrant lumping them together like that.

Which is true. The idea of "chemical-free" food and water is absurd.

The parent was the same category of statements as, "I don't eat food that has chemicals." While they sprinkle it a chemical based, flavor enhancing, preservative.