Nick Pell

But I don't ever think there's an upside to exaggerating the dangers of something like that.

I don't see any upside to it.

I always see downside.

Whereas, you know, if you give people, pun intended, the straight dope on this stuff, then they can make a rational decision about it without having to triangulate how much they've been lied to.

The other thing is when you try to ban something that's become a place for a lot of people to make money, those people making money are going to push back on any kind of regulation.

So around this time, the American Kratom Association is founded, becomes kind of a lightning rod for all opposition to regulations on Kratom, to any regulations on Kratom.

And eventually it's banned in Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

But it's perfectly legal most other places.

Some cities have banned it.

And in some places, you know, you have to do this song and dance where you pretend like you're going for my dog or whatever.

To me, it's kind of stupid, but I'm not the one making the laws.

The thing with supplements in general is they're pretty unregulated.

The key law here is the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994.

And what that says in a nutshell is that supplements are food and not drugs.

So you don't need FDA approval before you sell them any more than you need FDA approval every time you come up with a new way to mix up ground beef and cheese at the Taco Bell.

there's also restrictions on how supplements can be marketed.

You can't market them as any kind of treatment for an illness, for example.

Right, it's happy air.

The FDA can't just ban supplements without a reason.

It has to wait until it receives reports of harm or suspicion that something is being mislabeled or is adulterated or dangerous.