Yeah. And even then, that would have to be a result of both addiction and the state drug war. Without the latter, the stuff is extremely affordable. I was curious if it would help with anxiety so I ordered about $8 of it, which was about 2 sandwich bags stuffed full of it! It made me feel physically nauscious for the entire morning and I took a very small amount. But I don’t think I would have been impaired driving. Drivers on opioids frighten the crap out of me.
Of course, but it's obviously going to depend on the dose and the person's level of tolerance.
A few years ago the UK revised their regulations regarding driving while using prescribed opioids, taking an approach that essentially allows the driver to decide if they are too impaired to drive.
I'm not too sure that the data in that 2002 study is relevant today. opiate use has skyrocketed since then and it's reasonable to believe that things have changed. In my career as a paramedic, i've probably encountered more vehicle accidents where someone admitted that they have taken opiates (oxy/norco/etc) than anything. Yet it's not going to go down as a cause in many cases because while a blood test would show positive for opiates, it's difficult to pin it down. Alcohol is much easier to pin on drivers.
> If Kratom addicts start robbing convenience stores and offering blowies for Kratom cash i'll believe it
This has very little to do with the properties of a drug itself, and more to do with the demographics (poverty, unemployment, overall disenfranchisement, environmental factors like urban density and access to services) of people who use other drugs; specically, that usage of these substances often correlates with such disenfranchisement.
In other words, the people currently using Kratom may not be the same people using other drugs, and their circumstances may be different.
(Not a comment on Kratom, which I don't know much about, besides its popularity in some websites)