Outside of San Diego, Kratom is legal everywhere in California, which is both good and bad for the plant. On the one hand, consumers are free to use this Southeast Asian herb in order to alleviate serious medical symptoms. On the other, because Kratom trade is not regulated, shady vendors can easily combine their powders with synthetic substances or third-party drugs in order to give their buyers more reasons to come back.
The city of San Diego chose the worst possible solution to deal with merchants who abuse Kratom at the expense of the consumer. Instead of stepping in to improve the situation, they downright banned Kratom. In an industry that lacks regulation, there will always be people who try to get ahead of the competition through underhand methods. As is often the case with Kratom bans, the plant was erroneously categorized as a synthetic, psychoactive drug.
The real solution for San Diego’s problem does not lie in banning a useful natural remedy, but rather in modest regulation that forces kratom vendors to accurately label the contents of their Kratom products. Such is the case of Arizona and Utah, where the KCPA helps set healthy standards of quality for what is marketed as Kratom.
This is all the more important since Kratom is neither a synthetic, nor a psychoactive drug. Although Kratom does have psychotropic effects, it is not a designer pill meant to cause addiction, but rather a plant with a beneficial health impact. To this end, it is necessary to distinguish the unadulterated, pure Kratom powder from shady products packed with synthetic, psychoactive substances.
Regardless of how beneficial Kratom is for your own condition, it is completely illegal to sell, buy, or possess Kratom within the city limits of San Diego. This is utterly bad news both for consumers and certified vendors who are trying to reach out to a segment of the population genuinely interested in the medicinal properties of herbs.
Outside of San Diego, however, people living in California can easily order unadulterated Kratom from trustworthy vendors, such as The Golden Monk, who guarantee the purity of their products by means of extensive lab tests.
Furthermore, the San Diego Kratom ban isn’t permanent. People living in the city have a right to be heard by the mayor, to whom they can voice their concern over the hasty and unreasonable action that was taken against this natural, organic product.