On August 30th, 2016, it was announced that Kratom would be labeled a Schedule I drug in the United States by our do-no-good bureaucratic overlords in DC who work for the DEA. For those who are not familiar with the scheduling of drugs, there are five schedules of drugs, with the first (I) level being considered the most severally addicting and the level where there are no accepted medical benefits. It was announced last month that marijuana will maintain it's inexplicable categorization as a Schedule I drug, despite the fact that over half of the states in our nation have some form of medical marijuana policy within their borders.

Kratom is a natural plant indigenous to Thailand and Southeast Asia, and has been shown in numerous medical journals to fight the agonizing withdrawal of opiate addiction, as well as manage pain, cough, and diarrhea. It also produces stimulates similar to caffeine and can be used counteract fatigue. So, according to a some doctors, there are bonafide medical issues resolved by this plant, including removing chronic pain in patients with musculature disorders. Studies of the natural herb have been circulating the medical community recently, as the discovery of Kratom's medical benefit was only discovered in the West a decade or so ago.

Why is this important to, you may ask? Well, Alabama, in it's well-documented infinite wisdom, decided that Kratom was too dangerous to have public (or any) access to, so it was banned recently.

Well, now that Kratom is no longer available, opiate addicts must be prescribed methadone once again in order to battle the seemingly endless urge to use again. And, according to the most recent data, heroin use and overdoses are up nearly 20 percent in our great state. In Jefferson County, a cheap, impure batch of heroin mixed with elephant tranquilizers has hit the streets and claimed the lives of two unsuspecting victims. The same batch sent 174 people in Cincinnati to the hospital in the past couple weeks. Yet, a plant that helps such ill addicts is no longer readily available for consumption.

Heroin is here in America. It is in nearly every neighborhood. You most likely know someone who has battled addiction in their past, as there is hardly a family who has not been touched by the disease. So, the question remains: Are we battling the medical disease that is addiction in a productive manner, by continuing to looks backwards for solutions? We ban certain plants and herbs that help those in dire need of alternatives to synthetic opiods, we lock up addicts whose only crime succumbing to the evil shackles of addiction and we insist on continuous implementation of tried and true failed methods of placing sick people in cages without any offerings of assistance and the hurt just keeps on coming. There are more outlawed narcotics than ever before on our bloody streets, as turf wars rage on to control the black market which is protected by our policies enacted during our endless and win-less War on Drugs.

It is time for us to use alternative methods to battle the scourge of addiction in Alabama. We have the opportunity to become a shining light and example for the rest of our sister states. We must have a bold and open conversation about what is working, what hasn't worked, and what might work. Instead of relying solely on law enforcement and prosecutors, it is time to listen to doctors and medical professionals, drug policy experts and economists who know that creating a black market will lead to violence and unregulated product.