WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES, November 30, 2023 – As the popularity of kratom products grow with consumers increasingly preferring the improved sense of well-being they get from kratom over a cup of coffee, the risks of purchasing dangerously adulterated kratom products are increasing dramatically. With the surge in consumer acceptance of kratom, kratom vendors wanting to increase market share are now flooding the marketplace with products making illegal therapeutic claims to drive sales and offering super-concentrated products in various product forms that fail to provide proper instructions for safe use that pose potential safety threats to average kratom consumers.
“The FDA has extensive experience with economically motivated adulteration (EMA) that constitutes a fraud on consumers across a broad array of regulated products,” explained Mac Haddow, Senior Fellow on Public Policy with the American Kratom Association. “What is happening in the kratom marketplace is, in the absence of any responsible regulation by the FDA to protect kratom consumers, unscrupulous vendors are deliberately misleading consumers with illegal therapeutic claims, and more recently, with super-concentrated kratom products without proper instructions for safe use that pose real safety risks to the public.”
The American Kratom Association (“AKA”) issued its inaugural “Consumer Guidelines for Kratom Use” today to help consumers better understand how to use kratom most effectively for themselves and particularly how to identify misbranded, adulterated, and dangerously concentrated kratom products that do not have proper instructions for safe use; and issued an appeal to FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf, entitled “FDA – DO YOUR ACTUAL JOB!”, for the FDA to take immediate steps to fulfill its statutory duty to properly regulate kratom to protect consumers.
“The Consumer Guidelines for Kratom Use will be updated regularly to alert consumers to new threats that emerge from EMA in the kratom marketplace,” Haddow announced. “The real threat to the health and safety of the kratom consumer is the lack of action by the FDA while they are hell-bent to pursue their failed attempts to classify kratom as a Schedule I substance and thereby ban access to kratom by American consumers. That is why we are calling on Commissioner Califf to listen to our plea for the FDA – DO YOUR ACTUAL JOB! and order its implementation at the FDA.”
The AKA’s concern is focused on three areas: (1) the lack of prosecution by the FDA of the more than 80 kratom vendors who openly market kratom products with illegal therapeutic claims and who have been reported (with supporting evidence) by the AKA to the FDA; (2) the increasing marketing of super-concentrated kratom products that do not provide adequate labeling for consumers on the serving sizes and contents of the product that are openly marketed without any FDA regulations; and (3) the abuse of the import alert authority on kratom the FDA is using to create a de facto ban they cannot justify with science under the criteria for scheduling under the federal Controlled Substances Act.
Without responsible regulation of kratom by the FDA, the proliferation of product competition is encouraging the marketing of super-concentrated kratom products to maintain market share. The FDA’s failure to properly regulate kratom encourages this market behavior and they stand by while unsafe kratom products are marketed that helps the FDA to reconstruct its currently failed case to ban kratom.
“The AKA is calling for the FDA – DO YOUR ACTUAL JOB! to fulfill its statutory duty responsibly regulate the kratom marketplace with standards consistent with other dietary and botanical supplements, and then the launching of the AKA’s Consumer Guidelines for Kratom Use so consumers understand their responsibility to purchase and consume kratom products responsibly that protects their health and well-being,” Haddow concluded. “Consumers should not purchase any kratom product marketed by unscrupulous vendors who fail to properly manufacture or label their products.”
ABOUT AKA
The American Kratom Association (AKA), a consumer-based, nonprofit 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.
For more information, visit www.AmericanKratom.org, www.Kratomanswers.org or www.Protectkratom.org. Follow them on Twitter (@TheKratomAssn), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Americankratomassociation/)
