NIDA (the National Institute on Drug Abuse) **helps influence DEA policy. **Right now you can send them a comment asking for:
• Formal safety/toxicity studies on 7-OH
• A non-biased evaluation before any scheduling
• An end to corporate influence over natural compounds
• You oppose scheduling 7-OH without proper human safety studies
• NIDA should be funding research — not banning promising alkaloids
• We need harm reduction tools, not criminalization
📝 Send your comment here:
👉 https://nida.nih.gov/about-nida/contact-us/submit-question-comment
📚 Cite these studies:
- Henningfield et al. (2022) (PMC8860177) —
“Such an assessment was published for two kratom alkaloids in 2018 that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have identified as candidates for CSA listing: mitragynine (MG) and 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH-MG) (Henningfield et al., 2018a). That assessment concluded the abuse potential of MG was within the range of many other uncontrolled substances, that there was not evidence of an imminent risk to public health, and that a Schedule I listing (the only option for substances that are not FDA approved for therapeutic use such as kratom) carried public health risks including drug overdoses by people using kratom to abstain from opioids.”
🔗 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8860177/ - Kumar et al. (2018) (ResearchGate 301787574) —
“We found that mitragynine and the oxidized analog 7‑hydroxymitragynine are partial agonists of the human μ‑opioid receptor and are G‑protein‑biased agonists, which do not recruit β‑arrestin following receptor activation. Therefore, the Mitragyna alkaloid scaffold represents a novel framework for the development of functionally biased opioid modulators, which may exhibit improved therapeutic profiles.”
🔗 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301787574 - Kruegel et al. (2019) (PMC6598159) —
“We find that mitragynine is converted … to the much more potent mu‑opioid receptor agonist 7‑hydroxymitragynine … and show that 7‑hydroxymitragynine is formed … in mice and that brain concentrations of this metabolite are sufficient to explain most or all of the opioid‑receptor‑mediated analgesic activity of mitragynine.”
🔗 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6598159/