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Offlinenumnum59
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Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son * 1
    #25860036 - 03/08/19 03:05 AM (5 years, 21 days ago)

https://www.philly.com/health/kratom-deaths-mitragynine-overdose-opioids-herbal-tea-20190307.html?outputType=amp

The family of a Chester County man who died in June from an overdose of kratom has filed a wrongful-death suit against the company that sold its son the unregulated herbal product.

Caleb Sturgis, 25, of West Chester, died on June 27 after he drank tea made with kratom, according to the lawsuit against SoCal Herbal Remedies of Big Bear City, Calif., filed Wednesday in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.

Sturgis was driving to work on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Chester County when his car struck a curb and flipped over. The Chester County coroner ruled his death was from “acute mitragynine intoxication,” the active ingredient in kratom. No other drugs were found in his system, save for the amount of caffeine contained in a cup of coffee. Sturgis had been taking the supplement for an energy boost, his family said.

In the lawsuit, the Sturgis family contends that SoCal Herbal Remedies failed to provide information on the risks of using kratom and did not attempt to test the product to make sure it was safe for use.

“SoCal Herbal Remedies firmly believes it bears no liability for the unfortunate of death of Mr. Sturgis,” said Tony Sherr, attorney for the company.

Kratom, derived from the leaves of a Southeast Asian tree that is part of the coffee family, has been linked to at least four deaths in the Philadelphia region. It has been touted by users, businesses, and advocacy groups as a product that can help relieve pain, gives a mild energy boost, and ease the pain of opioid withdrawal.

Sturgis is the son of Scott Sturgis, an editor with the Inquirer, and Lori Chernisky Sturgis, of West Chester.

The family is asking for more than $50,000, according to the lawsuit.

The kratom industry has perpetuated a myth that the product is not lethal, Robert Mongeluzzi, the attorney for the family, said at a Thursday news conference.

“Kratom kills and kratom killed Caleb Sturgis," said Mongeluzzi. “It is addictive; it is deadly.”

Mongeluzzi held up the packet from SoCal Herbal Remedies that Caleb’s parents found on the kitchen table the day he died. He pointed out there were no dosage instructions. The only warning was to keep out of the hands of children.

“It provided none of the information consumers need to make safe choices,” he said.

SoCal Herbal Remedies has shipped 25,000 packets of kratom to users in Pennsylvania, Mongeluzzi said.

Tanya Sturgis, Caleb’s older sister, said that her brother changed after he began to use kratom. He became tired and would cancel activities, she said.

“He wasn’t himself,” she said. “But we didn’t know kratom would kill him,”

An estimated three million to five million people use kratom, according to the American Kratom Association, a Colorado-based nonprofit founded in 2014 to promote the product.

The Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Agency have warned the public repeatedly the product is not safe. Several states and cities have banned the sale of kratom.

The FDA has said that mitragynine is an addictive substance that acts on the brain’s opioid receptors and poses a risk of addiction. and that there is no evidence to indicate that kratom is safe or effective for any medical use. In September, the agency issued a new warning to two companies that are making unproven medical claims about kratom.

In 2016, the DEA announced it would reclassify kratom as a Schedule 1 drug, similar to heroin or marijuana, but industry groups were able to keep kratom on store shelves.

Mongeluzzi said the wrongful-death lawsuit was the first of its kind in Pennsylvania, but kratom has been the target of legal action elsewhere.

In September, a Florida woman sued three Pinellas County bars serving kratom tea, alleging her 19-year-old daughter “suffered frontal lobe damage to her brain,” the Tampa Bay Times reported.

In April, a North Dakota woman sued an online company that allegedly sold her kratom contaminated with salmonella.

In April, salmonella infections linked to kratom sickened at least 132 people in 38 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported at the time. In November, the FDA issued an advisory after finding “disturbingly high levels” of lead and nickel in kratom products.

Last Friday, Sunstone Organics voluntarily recalled two lots of kratom products that were found to potentially be contaminated with salmonella, according to the FDA.

by Mari A. Schaefer
Updated: March 7, 2019 - 4:23 PM
Mari A. Schaefer | @MariSchaefer | mschaefer@phillynews.com

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Offlinenumnum59
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: numnum59] * 5
    #25860038 - 03/08/19 03:06 AM (5 years, 21 days ago)

It wasn't the fact he hit a curb and flipped his car that killed him, it was that he took kratom.... :loldongs:

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OfflineOld Pokey
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: numnum59] * 2
    #25860047 - 03/08/19 03:19 AM (5 years, 21 days ago)

This would set a precedent that would severely burden the alcohol industry.  Imagine if every alcohol related traffic death resulted in a lawsuit against the brewery or distillery that produced the alcohol.

Will we ever start holding alcohol to the same safety/efficacy standards as other drugs?


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It's all mythology...

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OfflineOld Pokey
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: Old Pokey]
    #25860051 - 03/08/19 03:24 AM (5 years, 21 days ago)

Come on kids...

Can you say fetal alcohol spectrum disorders?


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It's all mythology...

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InvisibleLanc3r117
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: numnum59]
    #25860319 - 03/08/19 08:22 AM (5 years, 21 days ago)

It's sad they won't accept his death. Instead, they choose to drag on his legacy in this way...

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Offlinetacodude
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: Lanc3r117]
    #25860535 - 03/08/19 10:16 AM (5 years, 21 days ago)

Wait.... This person died in a car accident and it was ruled kratos overdose? So morals even exist in the health care system anymore?

Edit: It wasn't the industry, but the many neglected pain patients and opioids dependent people, addicted or not, who need kratos to live a life that isn't burdened by pain so much one can only choose relapse or suicide because the alternative is a slow painful death becoming more and more unable to take care of oneself along with suffering more and more with ones condition.

Edited by tacodude (03/08/19 10:23 AM)

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OfflineCountHTML
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: tacodude]
    #25860815 - 03/08/19 12:15 PM (5 years, 21 days ago)

Unfortunate and tragic but not Kratom’s Fault. I understand the family wants someone / something to blame.

It’s interesting because money talks in US politics and Kratom manufactures have become capable of lobbying for themselves. May keep feds paws off of it for a while.

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OfflineFractal420
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: CountHTML]
    #25861028 - 03/08/19 01:41 PM (5 years, 21 days ago)

Thats terrible, but obv dont do drugs and drive


--------------------
Dreaming of That face again.
It's bright and blue and shimmering.
Grinning wide
And comforting me with it's three warm and wild eyes.

Prying open MY third eye


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InvisibleAmanita86
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: Fractal420]
    #25861272 - 03/08/19 03:06 PM (5 years, 21 days ago)

“An estimated three million to five million people use kratom“

There’s gonna be three million to five million car crashes tomorrow..:omgz:

“but industry groups were able to keep kratom on store shelves.“

The ol switcheroo, going strictly by the book I see..:coolpost:


--------------------
:mushroom2:Orange clock, pencil:bouncysmoke:
"They threw me off the hay truck about noon...":fishing:
:mushroom2:*Mark 15:34:levitate::mushroom2::blueninja:
Gam zeh ya’avor...:sunny:

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InvisiblebodhisattaMDiscordReddit
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: Amanita86] * 1
    #25861300 - 03/08/19 03:17 PM (5 years, 21 days ago)

The ME might have found that the death was caused before the crash. For example being the age he was,25, if he had died of cardiac issues and had high levels of a drug in their system. You would probably have the drug linked to the cardiac arrest even if the drug was caffeine. Sure the body may have had all sorts of damage that wouldn't have been survivable but they can tell if the death occurred from the blunt trauma or something internal hence leading to the car crash.

It's interesting how quick people are to say it isn't kratoms fault despite having no info. Same as the anti kratom zealots are the pro kratom zealots. The lack of critical thinking is prevailing on both sides of the issue clearly.

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Offlinetacodude
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: bodhisatta]
    #25861431 - 03/08/19 04:19 PM (5 years, 21 days ago)

It's just so many attempts have been made to say there was a kratom overdose... What better than to say it happened before this car accident and only the examiner is educated enough and made enough observations they are the only one who can say whether or not that's the case? This is just too perfect for those pushing to ban kratom

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InvisibleAmanita86
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: bodhisatta]
    #25861680 - 03/08/19 06:45 PM (5 years, 21 days ago)

Gotta fight fire with fire.  These “kratom deaths” start to take on a tone after awhile so of course replies are going to get a little looser.


--------------------
:mushroom2:Orange clock, pencil:bouncysmoke:
"They threw me off the hay truck about noon...":fishing:
:mushroom2:*Mark 15:34:levitate::mushroom2::blueninja:
Gam zeh ya’avor...:sunny:

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InvisibleHolybullshit
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: Amanita86] * 2
    #25862040 - 03/08/19 09:58 PM (5 years, 21 days ago)

What a bunch of horse shit. I really want to know what the coroner was basing this on, and the details of any injuries sustained(apparenly post mortem) during the wreck.

Since I highly doubt the blood levels of mitragynine were anywhere near the amount known to be lethal, and I also doubt the kid died from respiratory depression. The only semi-legitimate thing he could be basing this on is cardiorespiratory failure, which is a fancy way of saying blood wasn't getting delivered to the brain for some reason. And the coroner would have to have evidence that this without a doubt killed him before the accident.

Unless there is some real shady behind the scenes shit going on, I got a feeling here that this isn't what the coroner is saying, he is just blaming the car wreck on the kratom. But you don't say DUI deaths are caused by acute alcohol intoxication, and you don't sue Budweiser after it happens. Either this gets cleared up in court, or the coroner is just a cog in a much grander plan.

Quote:

bodhisatta said:
..if he had died of cardiac issues and had high levels of a drug in their system. You would probably have the drug linked to the cardiac arrest even if the drug was caffeine.




I would love to see the evidence he died of cardiac issues, but more importantly, who decides what is high? What if the coroner is claiming the levels typical of a recreational dose of kratom is "high"? Do I get to say call bullshit then? Since millions of people have been taking it in those amounts for many years without dropping dead?

Sorry if I get tired when everytime someone is trying to say Kratom kills people the only evidence is a dead person who died in a very ambiguous manner. How come no one just drops dead, while not driving a car, with only kratom in their system? And if this only occurs to 1 in 20 million people, how much is the kratom really to blame? When do we just chalk it up to coincidence?

Edited by Holybullshit (03/08/19 10:19 PM)

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InvisibleAmanita86
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: bodhisatta]
    #25862117 - 03/08/19 10:42 PM (5 years, 21 days ago)

:whathesaid:

It’s like bigfoot sightings, there’s always some level of bullshit in the story and once you read enough stories in the order they’ve come out and put them i to that context they start to take on an snl feel.  It’s not because I have such a hard boner for kratom that I can’t think critically.  Pretty soon we’ll read about someone who died from kratom useage while incidentally getting shot in the face during a robbery, cause of death, too much krat powder..:thatsinteresting:


--------------------
:mushroom2:Orange clock, pencil:bouncysmoke:
"They threw me off the hay truck about noon...":fishing:
:mushroom2:*Mark 15:34:levitate::mushroom2::blueninja:
Gam zeh ya’avor...:sunny:

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InvisibleHolybullshit
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: bodhisatta] * 2
    #25862158 - 03/08/19 11:20 PM (5 years, 21 days ago)

And I am not normally one to suffer conspiracy theories, of any kind generally, but a Coroner's office would be the perfect front for the DEA to advance their war.

The Office of Coroner generally requires no formal education, whether they are an elected official or appointed. They often have the authority to overrule a forensic pathologist, and in many jurisdictions can rule on cause of death without even consulting an ME. Not saying any of this necessarily happened here, definitely looks like some kind of ME was involved. But what I am saying is it is an area with very little oversight, and coroner's have a history of being influenced to come to questionable conclusions.

Here is an excerpt from Postmortem

Quote:

...bribes and embezzlement in coroners’ offices were legion, because coroners had great leeway in presenting evidence and steering a verdict in a desired direction. Politicians were put on the payroll of businesses attempting to avoid bad publicity or liability when deaths occurred because of safety violations. These politicians served as "fixers": for a fee, they tried to influence the coroner’s court by picking the jury members, paying off the coroner or district attorney, condoning perjury, or sending key witnesses out of state. Similarly, well-connected families paid for suicides to be classified as accidents and unsavory details to be suppressed....Even uncorrupted coroners would manipulate the usual procedures of the death investigation system when a politician asked for a favor to protect a family against the stigma of suicide. When the determination of suicide was straightforward, for example, no inquest would be held, allowing the coroner to file the death certificate days later—escaping the attention of reporters, who checked only the new cases.




And even recently, Coroners have been guilty of being involved in schemes involving insurance fraud, and working with organized crime to cover up murders.

Not to say this Coroner's office is like that, but I imagine an upstanding Coroner could be influenced by the DEA to do good on behalf of his country. And if it were to occur, no one would notice or even be looking.

And even without a hint of corruption, I wouldn't trust the systems in place to make the correct decisions in a situation like this.

Quote:

But no matter what form it takes, the death investigation system in the U.S. is in trouble. A yearlong investigation by NPR, PBS Frontline and ProPublica has found a dysfunctional system short of qualified people, squeezed for resources and lacking in oversight.

Two years ago a blue ribbon panel created by the National Academy of Sciences pointed out the lack of mandatory standards for autopsies and the absence of oversight into the performance of coroners and medical examiners. It recommended that the goal of every state should be to move away from a coroner system, which is not based on medicine, and instead hire board certified forensic pathologists and put them to work as medical examiners.




From https://www.npr.org/2011/02/02/133403760/coroners-dont-need-degrees-to-determine-death

Which makes it easy for me to imagine there could be someone with an ideological axe to grind in that office, or perhaps even a perplexed ME with no obvious fatal injuries taking an easy way out.

Don't get me wrong, this is all base speculation, but I find any of them about as likely, or even statistically speaking more likely, than a usual dose of kratom outright killing a healthy young man.

I will add one caveat here:

Extracts, and I have been saying this for a while now, extracts need to be regulated, or failing that industry standards need to be put in place. But our system is so broken, the only thing they are capable of is an outright ban, if not criminalization. There could be an extract which contained mitragynine and only mitragynine(or other alkaloids present in trace amounts), and since mitragynine actually doesn't appear to responsible for most of the effects of kratom, a user could ingest HUGE before feeling "usual" kratom effects. I could imagine in such a situation things becoming dangerous under the right circumstances.

Dosages with extracts can also rise far and above what is possible with kratom leaf. This can lead to dependence with more than minor withdrawals. People need to be made aware of this.

Extracts are great for convenience, but I actually wouldn't mind if they were to disappear, because kratom leaf is going to end up banned when extracts are the culprit.

Edited by Holybullshit (03/08/19 11:38 PM)

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Offlinetacodude
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: Holybullshit]
    #25862282 - 03/09/19 02:53 AM (5 years, 20 days ago)

Is there even a known lethal dose from alkaloids? 7-oh-m might have a lethal dose ready to achieve with a pure supply, but that compound barely looks produced in the plant. I'm sure there's an ld50, but I'm just wondering if it's realistically a risk.

Edit: The poster above me is on point.  One thing that needs to be added about regulations is the need to check for other compounds in it. It's only a matter of time before some idiot adds an ultra potent opioid into an "extract" or "enhanced leaf."

Edited by tacodude (03/09/19 03:07 AM)

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InvisibleHolybullshit
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: tacodude]
    #25863251 - 03/09/19 01:53 PM (5 years, 20 days ago)

Not in humans AFAIK, but there are formulas for conversion of LD50s in mice.

But that is kind of my whole point, if we can't even establish a realiably lethal dose in humans how much sense does it make to go around claiming kratom kills?

Here we go,

Quote:

The researchers found 547.7 mg/kgbw to be the average lethal dose of mitragynine when it was taken orally. None of the mice died from oral doses of 7-hydroxymitragynine, but the mice given large oral doses of 7-hydroxymitragynine experienced seizures and depressed breathing.




1 gram of kratom = 10-15mg of mitragynine.

And if you consider that mitragynine is a selective mu agonist, while 7-OH has delta activity, consuming the two together more than likely raises the LD50 of mitragynine. 7-OH is found much smaller levels, but it is much more potent than mitragynine. AFAIK these are all G protein biased partial agonists, in humans it's possible that its other effect independent of any opioid action are more dangerous than its action as a narcotic.

Edited by Holybullshit (03/09/19 02:04 PM)

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InvisiblebodhisattaMDiscordReddit
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: Holybullshit]
    #25863274 - 03/09/19 01:58 PM (5 years, 20 days ago)

Not all people are the same anyway. A couple tabs of aspirin might cause one person to die and not 999,999 other people. It seems people think this one case is going to be the poster child for the dea or something.

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InvisibleHolybullshit
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: bodhisatta]
    #25863292 - 03/09/19 02:05 PM (5 years, 20 days ago)

Quote:

bodhisatta said:
Not all people are the same anyway. A couple tabs of aspirin might cause one person to die and not 999,999 other people. It seems people think this one case is going to be the poster child for the dea or something.




Why wouldn't it? The DEA has literally been doing that with EVERY death which tangentially involves Kratom, even when other more dangerous drugs are involved. Now they've got one with only kratom and caffeine, so why wouldn't they use it?

And it is interesting that you chose aspirin, as it causes Reye's syndrome. Compared to lethal effects from kratom this happens much more frequently and reliably, costs to society are much higher, can leave one with debilitating brain injuries, etc. One could reasonably argue that aspirin is much more dangerous than Kratom because of this.

Edited by Holybullshit (03/09/19 02:14 PM)

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InvisibleAmanita86
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Re: Chester County family sues kratom distributor in death of son [Re: bodhisatta]
    #25863412 - 03/09/19 02:39 PM (5 years, 20 days ago)

Quote:

bodhisatta said:
Not all people are the same anyway. A couple tabs of aspirin might cause one person to die and not 999,999 other people. It seems people think this one case is going to be the poster child for the dea or something.



Just a friendly suggestion, maybe you’ve not been keeping close watch, because that is exactly what they do, they even had them numbered until people went through pointing out “possible” foolishness, the same foolishness I suspect I see in this article.

That double standard bullshit doesn’t slip past me these days...:nojustno:


--------------------
:mushroom2:Orange clock, pencil:bouncysmoke:
"They threw me off the hay truck about noon...":fishing:
:mushroom2:*Mark 15:34:levitate::mushroom2::blueninja:
Gam zeh ya’avor...:sunny:

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