Bellingham City Council just made it a crime to stay off opioids, anti-science decision

They just voted to criminalize a plant leaf that's kept people off opioids for years and selling it now carries a year in jail.

Somebody in this city right now is using kratom instead of relapsing. Instead of picking up a needle again. And the council just told them that choice is illegal.

Say that plainly: the council took something keeping people away from opioids and made it illegal. And they did it to a substance that, in its traditional leaf form, is milder than a lot of stuff that is legal. People drink coffee for a stimulant kick and pour themselves a beer to unwind without anyone proposing a year in jail for selling either one. Kratom leaf is in that same mild category, yet it's the one getting treated like a narcotic.

And the science doesn't agree with them. No study on what happens when people using it for harm reduction suddenly can't get it anymore. No transition period. No understanding of the withdrawal that could push people toward opioids or worse. No addiction medicine physician testified about what forced, sudden discontinuation does to relapse risk. They went from "let's talk about this" to "this is now a crime" in one meeting, with no scientific evidence behind it. Just a decision to control people for no valid reason whatsoever.

That's really what this comes down to: control dressed up as concern. When a government bans something outright instead of studying it, understanding it, regulating it, who actually uses it and why, or who stands to benefit from banning it, that's a council deciding it knows better than the people it governs, without doing the work to earn that authority. This decision shows the council doesn't actually care about the medical outcomes of the people who live here.

(The substance actually driving the alarm is 7-OH, a synthetic, concentrated derivative that behaves nothing like the leaf. The decision is carelessness dressed up as action that a doctor would be ashamed of)