This new development is just the height of ridiculousness. It's 2014 and Mark Woodward at the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs wants to put on a Reefer Madness show by trying to ban kratom. Kratom is simply a natural pain reliever that can help with overcoming substance abuse and withdrawal symptoms.

Kratom was banned decades ago by Thailand and widely believed because use of it was interfering with opium trade. What Woodward would rather you not know is that Thailand is reconsidering its ban.

Woodward needs to settle down his paranoia about children using Kratom. Kratom proponents feel that sales of kratom need to be banned to minors as was decided upon by the Louisiana state legislature in 2012.

Kratom comes from a plant in the coffee family and can be used as a stimulant. But Kratom's effects are not as well known as is for coffee. Banning kratom would make it very difficult to do more research on it.

Kratom use alone is not known to have killed anyone. While I don't now use it, I would like to continue to have the freedom to buy and use kratom when I choose, especially if I have a medical condition that comes up for it. It would be insane governing should kratom be banned. I wouldn't put it pass Woodward to want punishment over kratom to be for up to life in prison. I suggest people write their legislators, telling them that a ban on sales to minors is all they need to worry about doing when it comes to kratom.

Kratom users fight back (http://www.okcfox.com/story/24465573/kratom-users-fight-back)

Amazing. Anytime the government wants to take away our freedoms they simply throw out the line that "it's for the children!!!" and the sheeple fall into line.

I will be extremely surprised if this doesn't end up banned.

https://www.change.org/petitions/oklahoma-state-legislator-please-reconsider-banning-kratom

Here is a petition to the state legislature. If you support individual liberty then you should sign this. I had never heard of kratom before today but I am so sick of the government taking more and more freedoms away from people to solve non-existent problems.

Here is a Forbes writer's account who decided to give kratom a try. He thought the effects were better than coffee.

David DiSalvo - The Daily Brain - Results of My Kratom Experiment (http://www.daviddisalvo.org/the-daily-brain/2013/4/5/results-of-my-kratom-experiment.html#comment19967826)

OBN does have to find away to keep themselves marketable. (I have never understood why OSBI, OHP, OBN and ABLE don't just become one state police agency to eliminate the admin overhead and put more cops on the streets instead of behind desks.)

On the other hand I work in a hospital and we have people coming into the Emergency Department whacked out of their gourd. Most of them have no idea what they took. Test usually come back as one of the many fun legal street drugs that people purchase in one of our city's many fine third world convenience stores. No the hospital does not call the law on these folks. (If they did that, the police would have to be on our doorstep 24/7. They do educate on the health risk and kick them to the street.

Maybe if illegal drugs were legalized, well regulated and labeled, people would have a better idea as to what they're fooling around with. In a legalized atmosphere, though, be more important to get better educated about what drugs can do and to know when drug use becomes drug abuse.

Damn, Why does Woodward hate freedom so much??

Damn, Why does Woodward hate freedom so much??

The war on drugs is prone to corruption. If some of that is present in Oklahoma, its exposure would surely collapse a significant part of the opposition to significant drug law reform in Oklahoma.

Before today. I was completely unaware that something called Kratom actually existed.
Ditto for Woodward. (is woodward, like, the code word for "halluciniogenic truffleshroom?
or more like "drone sucking of the public teat in the name of bureaucrapsy"?)