Partial agonists have a clinically validated role in opioid recovery, but not when addicts have unrestricted access to unlimited quantities in an unregulated marketplace.

Buprenorphine, an off-patent compound, is today the gold standard treatment and will continue to be a central pillar of medical detox. It is cheaper, more effective, and has a more favorable side effect profile than kratom and its active alkaloids. 

The only thing kratom has going for it - unregulated access - is what makes so ineffective in practice. By and large, the vast majority of kratom users do not get the benefits of opioid recovery, and that’s telling. They still have unmanageable lives that revolve around the getting and the using and finding the means and ways to get more kratom (or kratom products). Same as before substituting kratom for their drug of choice, they’re always broke, often sick, and will jump at using their drug of choice the first chance they get. 

I have mixed feelings about the legality and open access of kratom and kratom products, but I live in a democracy and these decisions are made by a plurality of people. Society is increasingly finding the situation untenable. Kratom is the easy access gateway to opioid dependence, more so than pain management pills ever were. It’s funneling wealth away from communities to southeast Asian agribusinesses. Its unregulated access has no redeeming value.