Justice Minister Chaikasem Nitsiri is pushing senior officials to end a 70-year-old ban on kratom as he believes the leaf could help wean Thais off meth.
The legal status of kratom is now under review in Thailand and Pascal Tanguay, a program director with the Thailand offices of PSI, a Washington DC-based global health organization, thinks it should be legalized: “There’s never been a single death associated with kratom. People have been chewing this for thousands of years with no cases of overdose, psychosis, murder, violent crime. Never in all of recorded history.”
Tanguay, who is participating in the Thai government’s legal review of kratom, is confident that the drug’s prohibited status will change.
A longtime Bangkok resident who’s used the drug countless times but asked to remain anonymous describes its effects: “There’s a gentle rush to it but it doesn’t impair your abilities. Everything feels a bit rosier. But it’s nothing even close to amphetamine or marijuana. No crash, no comedown. Chewing more doesn’t help: you can’t ever get past a plateau so it doesn’t seem like you could overdose,” Global Post reported.
Even if Thailand’s Ministry of Justice is able to legalize kratom, it faces a dubious public. A recent poll showed 52 percent worry legalization could lead to kratom misuse; 48 percent view kratom to be a harmless traditional medicine.
