Adrienne Annice 🍑🫐🐦🐝

The multibillion dollar kratom industry pushes the rhetoric that while “synthetic” extracts are dangerous, “natural” products are OK. The problem is there is no industry standardization of the term “natural,” even as manufacturers extract and purify and concentrate ingredients while hiding behind this branding to give consumers the illusion of safety. Here Todd Underwood, CEO of the kratom retailer MitWellness, explains the process of deriving what he calls “natural extracts.” Meanwhile the American Kratom Association’s Jerry Keen says such products as described would not in fact be considered as “natural” per the AKA. This is not just semantics. If we’re discussing banning “synthetic extracts” while insisting “natural products” are safer and allowable, we need to be able to concretely define the difference in preparation, processing, and constitution of these products. (Mansplaining what “metabolism” means does not address these questions about product processing, by the way.)