Editor’s Note:
URGENT: Take Action Now — Senate Bill 154 has passed both chambers of the Louisiana Legislature and is now on Governor Jeff Landry’s desk. If signed, this law will criminalize kratom and turn 325,000 Louisianans into felons by August 1. The American Kratom Association is urging residents to sign the petition and contact the Governor to veto the bill before it’s too late.
A mother in Lafayette wakes up to silence. Her teenage son, once full of mischief and music, died in a drunk driving crash. The driver who hit him was nearly three times the legal limit. The liquor store that sold him the booze is still open. The bar he drank at that night faces no consequence. The culture that cheers alcohol as harmless fun remains firmly in place.
Each year, Louisiana buries its sons and daughters because of alcohol. It contributes to liver disease, cancer, suicide, violent outbursts, fatal car crashes, and the slow unraveling of families who live in its shadow. In 2023, alcohol-related crashes alone claimed 244 lives in our state. Thousands more died from chronic conditions tied to drinking. Yet alcohol continues to be glorified, advertised during football games, and sold on nearly every street. No one is proposing to criminalize drinkers. No lawmakers are racing to shut down bars. When alcohol destroys, we call it a tragedy. We never call for prohibition.
But kratom? A leaf. A plant. A botanical that thousands of Louisianans use to manage chronic pain, recover from addiction, and maintain their sobriety—that is what lawmakers have chosen to outlaw.
On May 27, the Louisiana House passed Senate Bill 154 with 89 votes in favor and only five opposed. The Senate had already passed it. Now the bill sits on Governor Jeff Landry’s desk, awaiting his signature. If he signs it, kratom will become a Schedule I controlled substance in Louisiana beginning August 1. Anyone found in possession of more than 14 grams could be charged with a felony, fined up to $2,000, and imprisoned for one to five years. Even possession of smaller amounts carries a fine of up to $500 and a criminal record. There is no legal limit, no middle ground, no discretion. Kratom users will be criminals, plain and simple.
There were opportunities to amend the bill. Lawmakers could have banned synthetic or adulterated “gas station kratom.” They could have established a regulated framework for safe access. Instead, they rejected both proposals by wide margins, showing no interest in compromise or dialogue. From the start, this was about punishment.
The justification for such a sweeping ban rests on a handful of deaths, nearly all of which involved multiple substances. According to CDC data, kratom was not the sole cause in almost any of the cases cited. Most included fentanyl, benzodiazepines, alcohol, or other drugs. A 2022 toxicological review published in Frontiers in Pharmacology confirmed that kratom does not cause the kind of respiratory depression that leads to opioid fatalities. Another study, published in Addiction, found that opioids are more than 1,000 times more likely to cause a fatal overdose than kratom. The science is clear—and it was ignored.
What explains this move, then?
The politics are easy to trace. Senator Jay Morris, the bill’s sponsor, has received over $10,000 in campaign contributions from pharmaceutical companies, private rehab centers, and health industry lobbyists—precisely the sectors that benefit from eliminating a natural alternative to pain management and recovery. Meanwhile, the prison system gains another stream of nonviolent offenders, swept up not for harming others but for seeking relief from trauma, withdrawal, or chronic pain.
The people who use kratom are not who the state makes them out to be. They are veterans, teachers, nurses, parents. They are individuals who once relied on alcohol or prescription pills, and who now maintain their well-being with kratom tea instead of Vicodin or vodka. Many of them have regained custody of children, rebuilt marriages, or held down jobs for the first time in years. These are not hypothetical cases; these are real lives—lives that may now be ruined, not by a drug, but by the state.
And what support will be offered to them once kratom becomes illegal?
There is no plan. No detox infrastructure. No counseling. No public health initiative. No transition funding. Lawmakers appear to believe that 325,000 Louisianans will simply stop using kratom on August 1, without assistance or alternatives. What happens when they don’t? When relapse sets in? When alcohol and fentanyl, both still legal or easily accessible, come back into their lives?
If kratom is as dangerous as legislators now claim, where is the system to help people who depend on it? Where are the reentry programs, the mental health services, the helplines? There aren’t any. Because this was never about helping people. It was about controlling them.
The reality is chilling: we are replacing a plant with a prison cell. We are preparing to warehouse hundreds of thousands of nonviolent users, not because they posed any threat to public safety, but because punishing them is politically convenient. It creates the illusion of order, while leaving real addiction and mental health crises untouched.
Worse still is the staggering hypocrisy. Lawmakers who claim to value liberty and personal responsibility have abandoned both. Politicians who once railed against the War on Drugs are now advancing it. Even some Democrats who have decried mass incarceration stood silent as this bill advanced. And when a grieving mother testified about losing her child—not to pure kratom, but to a cocktail of drugs—legislators seized on that pain to justify a sweeping, unscientific policy that will only multiply the grief.
We mourn for her loss. We should all mourn. But grief must not be used to justify legislation that is reactive, cruel, and deeply flawed. We don’t honor the dead by harming the living.
Today, the American Kratom Association and thousands of Louisiana residents are pleading with Governor Jeff Landry to veto SB 154. He alone can stop this catastrophe before it begins. He can prevent the arrests, the prison sentences, the criminal records that will follow otherwise law-abiding people for the rest of their lives.
Because if he signs this bill, then every relapse, every overdose, every shattered family, every life lost in the fallout will be part of his record. And we will remember. Loudly. Publicly.
Kratom didn’t kill those people. We did—through fear, political theater, and a refusal to listen.
There is still time to stop this. But if the state proceeds, the blood that follows won’t be from a plant.
It will be from policy.
Great article! Thank you for publishing this!
The FDA and most media have broadly defamed this amazing herb. It might do so much to make this a healthier society, but with Big Pharma and Big Alcohol being so influential on legislators, no healthy competition can be permitted.
Thanks again for this courageous real journalism which is another thing our country needs more of!