Just a quick hello from Ohio! My wife and I lhave lived in Ohio our entire lives. We own a Kratom shop and find ourselves educating people about Kratom on a daily basis. We are quite political and tend to associate with many that hold political office. On April 5 we will be having dinner with Mike Dewine and hope to grab his ear and discuss the opiod epidemic and Kratom and how it changes lives. I find most of our customers take Kratom for a variety of reasons and each has a unique story of what lead them to the Kratom community. We have seven children three dogs two cats and my wife has OCD. I constantly tell her we dont live in a museum but sometimes it feels like it. We have developed several relationships in the last two years in Indonesia and get our product straight from the source. Good luck all keep up the good fight.

@freedak Hello & Welcome to our community. It's a real pleasure to meet you.

@freedak Hello Mr. Freedak: It is great to hear that you live in Ohio and are Kratom advocates, given the recent attempts by the Ohio Board of Pharmacy to schedule it. You seem to be in a unique position to have personal relationships with some of our state politicians who can actually make a difference in the fight to keep Kratom legal in our state. If I could be so presumptuous, I would like to share with you a brief summary of my story with Kratom. I am a well known University professor, teaching at the University of Akron, and business leader in the Northeastern Ohio area until my recent retirement, which I will mention later. I have suffered from OCD, depression and anxiety for years (since childhood). I have been under psychiatric care for that, unbeknownst to students and/or business partners or colleagues. In the last decade, I began to develop chronic arthritic joint pain that cannot be managed by typical over-the-counter analgesics; without danger to my liver and kidneys. I read about Kratom in an article in the Akron Beacon Journal and found that it was being sold in a store that was a few blocks from my house near the Municipal airport. I did not hold much hope for getting any help out of it; but I thought it was worth a try for the debilitating joint pain. I began taking it and found that not only did my arthritic pain subside, but Kratom was having a positive effect on managing my anxiety/mental issues. I was absolutely shocked and changed my medicine regime. I had more energy and continued to teach and work for several years more than I had planned. With the current Kratom ban looming, I have titrated down the Kratom and tritrated up the older pharmaceuticals. The physical pain has returned, causing me to turn down any new teaching assignments. I simply could not manage the rigors of lecturing and moving about a classroom helping students with the debilitating joint pain. (NOTE: I had since left the University of Akron and was teaching at local career colleges.) I am 64 years old and taking Kratom for pain relief and anxiety disorder comfort. I am not taking it for recreational use to get high. I did enough of that in the late 1960's and early 1970's. I am sure there are many people like me who would like to continue contributing to society, but now stand at a crossroads with the ban of Kratom as a real possibility. Thank you so much for listening to my story. It is probably familiar territory, but at least it stands as another example of direct damage and collateral damage (students I can no longer teach) by such a scheduling decision of Kratom. Sincerely, Steve (aka the_professor) PS - I think that it is fair to classify students that I can no longer teach as collateral damage because I have been voted, by my peers, as Professor of the Year, two times at two different Universities.

Thank you @FreeDaK , @the_professor ❣ @FreeDaK welcome to the forum, as @ska and prof Steve said! I'm very interested in further information as I know additional Ohio residents. It's nice to have people respond and willing to help.

@the_professor Your story is an all to familiar one professor and I think it again reiterates the necessity to keep it available to individuals who not only find it life changing but as a way to keep living life to the fullest. After speaking with the Ohio Pharmeceutical Board my optimism for it not becoming a controlled substance grew substantially. I will stay in touch with everybody and let them know the progress I have made and the possibilty of it becoming banned.

@freedak I'm so sorry to hear about your situation. If you have any ideas on how I can help you guys out please pm me. Im a Kratom farmer in the United States. And I made some advacacy picture that I'll link you at the bottom from my farm. If you want to use them to help with awareness your more then welcome to. https://akakratom.com/topic/877/share-these-photos-to-save-ohio

Welcome to our community. I'm sorry your facing such intrusion. When my state (FL) was targetted for bans, and then my county, it was an incredibly anxious time. Some good did come from it though. I wouldn't of gotten involved with the the inception of the AKA or be around to build out this Kratom forum & watch dog app.