TANGIPAHOA PARISH REJECTS KRATOM BAN: FOCUS SHIFTS TO REGULATION AND RESEARCH

Typical logic would suggest that any attempt to limit access to kratom would be a bad thing for advocates of the herbal supplement.

But as more and more local Louisiana municipalities attempt to take action against kratom, the repetitive and contradictory nature of those attempts is starting to skew the conversation away from prohibition and toward regulation.

That was the case when Tangipahoa Parish opted against a proposed kratom ban to further study the issue.

In the end, the parish council tabled the measure without any plans to revisit the issue and kept kratom access available for customers in Tangipahoa Parish. How the council arrived at that decision, though, shows that the conversation around kratom is changing and that the typical scare tactics are starting to fade in the face of emerging science.

A proposed ban on kratom sales in the parish was scheduled for a vote on May 28 of this year. It’s a process that has played out in other Louisiana municipalities, and at times has included the required community input before quickly acting against the dietary supplement. In Tangipahoa Parish, the public comments created cause for pause, and the council opted to send the measure back to the Regulations Committee for “further investigation.”

Beyond just simply keeping legal access to kratom in Tangipahoa Parish, the decision, and the testimony that led to it, show how the conversation around kratom is evolving in favor of regulation and further study.

Familiar Fear Tactics

Across the country, municipalities that attempt to ban kratom have taken similar routes to arrive there. It starts with warnings that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provided about the lack of approved uses for kratom. Sprinkle in warnings from law enforcement– like the ‘man who overdosed with kratom coming out of his nose’ in Wisconsin and a similar story at a hearing in Ohio. Neither story was corroborated with evidence or a drug test.

Those fear tactics affected the hearing in Tangipahoa Parish. The first speaker was a resident who joked that the council had seen him “on a regular basis” and was responding to the concerns he had heard at the previous meeting about kratom.

His testimony started with asking “did we find out what it is?” before pausing, having to clarify what his question was, and then being told kratom is a “leafy substance from southeast Asia” by a member of the council. When he was told that it would be explained by someone else, he said he wasn’t trying to pick on anyone, but that “I know y’all, I know where you come from.”

The final point he had to make to council members was that “this stuff was never in these stores when I was growing up” before deferring to the idea that prohibition was the “values” he was raised in.

“Where we were raised in this part of the country, anything like that, they caught you with a bag of weed or something, they’d tie you to a fence post and beat the tar out of you.”

That was the only voice from the community that supported a ban on kratom sales.

Listening to the Locals

Testifying in favor of kratom was a trio of local voices from different perspectives. First was the owner of a smoke shop who testified that he had recently consumed kratom and was not impaired in any way, “no purple elephants and I’m not trying to bite anyone’s face.” Another resident testified about how kratom has been a helpful part of her daily routine.

In a display that was the opposite of the first presenter, Paul Schexnaydre testified about what kratom was, how he used it as part of his daily routine and even added kratom to a bottle of orange juice and shook it up to show how kratom was most often used. Schexnaydre cleared up factual inaccuracies about kratom that had been discussed, went through the labels that were available on responsible kratom products, and made a plea to the council.

“I don’t see it as fair that someone else’s abuse of their rights should affect mine,” he said.

As someone with experience being “in and out of the Tangipahoa jail,” Schexnaydre did not want to see something that had helped him become criminalized in the parish.

“I’m just tired of tyranny,” he said as he gathered his display materials and walked away from the podium.

The type of tyranny that Schexnaydre was worried about was on full display during the final 10 minutes of discussion: Tyranny of the uninformed.

Vice-chair of the council Brigette called on Bridget Bailey, the director of a coalition dealing with substance abuse, to testify to the council about kratom. The only issue is that Bailey struggled with the facts and science behind kratom and said seemingly contradictory statements. At one point, Bailey even said students could “pick (kratom products up) on the way to a school event” before testifying that the state legislature had passed an age limit of 21 years old to buy kratom products.

Bailey contended that the active alkaloids in kratom were the substances covered under state law and said that children could still purchase kratom products if they were not labeled properly, without submitting any evidence or examples as such.

When asked about the legality of kratom, Bailey incorrectly stated that 12 states had banned kratom before being corrected that 12 states had passed laws regulating the supplement. Bailey incorrectly stated that the Drug Enforcement Agency was behind the FDA-announced kratom studies and failed to mention the research done by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Amidst the confusion of the testimony, a motion was proposed to table the matter and send it back to the committee for more research. The motion was adopted unanimously.