RHODE ISLAND’S KRATOM LEGALIZATION VETO: A SETBACK FOR ADVOCATES

Aerial panorama of Providence skyline and Rhode Island capitol building at dusk. Providence is the capital city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. Founded in 1636 is one of the oldest cities in USA.

It feels hard to expect advocates to accept a ‘moral victory’ when a bill gets nixed by the governor after passing on the final day of the session.

That’s what happened in Rhode Island, where the current ban on the sale of kratom was scheduled to be flipped into a regulatory structure. Both houses worked together to make a compromise bill after a hearing and the two bills covering the same subject were condensed into “substitute A” and sent to the governor’s desk.

So when Gov. Daniel McKee vetoed the measure, it’s understandable that those in favor of the measure were delivered a metaphorical gut punch. But that doesn’t mean the effort was a waste of time and resources.

Although the effort to overturn a kratom ban in Rhode Island was vetoed at the final step of the process, the lingering effects of this process, and the hearing that came with the bill, show the progress that has been made in both the legal and scientific advancement of the herbal supplement. With the current state of politics in the other states that have banned kratom, the developments in Rhode Island show that the state is still leading the race to flip a kratom ban into a policy that protects consumers.

Two different versions of the Kratom Consumer Protection Act (KCPA) eventually became Senate Bill 2704 and was vetoed on June 26. The bill passed by a vote of 39-20 in the House, then passed through the Senate 19-14 before being transmitted to the governor’s desk.

While many remained optimistic that the bill would become law based on positive developments in the hearing for the bill, others could see the writing on the wall in that same discussion.

State Sen. Hanna Gallo made her case to the Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee, and expertly laid out the current state of kratom both in Rhode Island, where it is legal and in other states, where there are no federal restrictions and even some states that regulate the sale of kratom. If this law had passed, Gallo made it clear: Kratom would be kept out of the hands of minors, require specific labeling and set up punishments for those who “violate safety protocols.”

“I believe our state and our constituents are best served by the legalization and regulation of kratom,” Gallo said.

The Cost of a Kratom Ban

When the time came for questions, Sen. Elaine Morgan first started by asking if kratom is legal in the state after she had joked with Gallo about ways to take kratom before the hearing. The two playfully bantered about being rebellious by indulging in kratom without being sure of whether or not Morgan was violating the law.

Gallo herself was unable to give a solid answer on the specifics of legality; both senators agreed that it was in the best interest of Rhode Island consumers to have the choice to purchase kratom.

“We don’t regulate the herbal industry,” Morgan said.

That issue was a real concern for Mike Overstreet, who testified that his family was unable to consider a move to the state due to the ban on kratom. As someone who used the plant as part of his routine, Overstreet said he could not risk the legal gray area of being a kratom consumer in the state.

“Due to kratom being wrongfully labeled as Schedule I in Rhode Island a bag of leaf powder this size is punishable (for a fine) up to $500,000 and life in prison.“ he said. “I don’t think there’s anybody on this committee or in this room who thinks I shouldn’t be able to go home to my son because of a bag of tea leaves.”

Beth Dwyer is the Director of the Department of Business Regulation (DBR) and testified with a whimsical smile on her face as she told the committee that her department does not handle herbal supplements–they handle business insurance matters, audits and other regulatory functions that would not align with being included in a KCPA. After Dwyer questioned why her department was attached to the bill, she was told that the bill’s authors were already working to change the language and correctly attribute the proper agency. In the revised version of the bill, DBR was replaced with the civil division of the attorney general’s office.

Opponents of this KCPA and similar measures in other states have used a regulatory shell game similar to this tactic to derail legislation and pressure state agencies that cannot fund such regulatory tasks.

Resistance Without Evidence

Despite the efforts of lawmakers to address these concerns and fine-tune the bill, it was not enough to avoid objection from the state AG’s office. The inability of agencies to work with the legislators behind the bill to try and find a middle ground was firmly on display as members of state medical agencies took to the microphone at the hearing.

Two representatives of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities & Hospitals (BHDDH) spoke against the measure, Brad Inman and Linda Mahoney, and tried to make the case that the lack of research and approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should lead lawmakers to continue to ban the supplement in the state.

What was lacking from their testimony was any scientific findings or specific health issues associated with kratom. It was said that kratom affects similar receptors as morphine, and another speaker accused kratom of having opiate-like properties when used “too much” but did not offer any scientific reasoning, studies or data to back any of those claims.

While the representatives of BHDDH suggested there was no available research on whether kratom was safe, Mac Haddow of the American Kratom Association was quick to point out that the National Institute on Drug Abuse has hundreds of peer-reviewed studies available that do not align with what the FDA has suggested about kratom.

The closest attempt by the BHDDH delegation was a reference to Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data (nationwide) and data from the state of California that attributed fewer than a hundred deaths in the country to kratom alone. In their presentation, Mahoney referenced the nearly 400 Rhode Islanders who died of opioid overdose in the last year of available data.

Mahoney did present an anecdotal story of walking into a “bodega” with pipes and other smoking accessories and coaxing a warning out of the proprietor of the shop that he would not sell kratom in his shop. That was followed by a price check of an unnamed online kratom retailer, with Mahoney eventually concluding that Adderall would be cheaper.

She did not expand on the connection between a dietary supplement and a stimulant like Adderall, which is used to treat vastly different conditions than the opioids that lawmakers often compare kratom to.

Per the bill that would go on to be passed in both houses of the Rhode Island legislature, kratom would be labeled as a food product and sold as a dietary supplement. To further assuage those concerns, a clause was added to the substitute bill that required kratom labels to state “This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.”

Despite those attempts by lawmakers to address concerns, the same medical agencies would go on to encourage the governor’s veto of the bill.