¿La cura de Tailandia para la dependencia de la metadona? Un estimulante vegetal de la selva

A pesar de su criminalización por parte de los Estados Unidos, en Tailandia el kratom se ha considerado tradicionalmente como un analgésico orgánico.

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As illicit drugs go, Southeast Asia’s leafy plant “kratom” is hardly ideal for thrill seekers. Those who chew its sour-tasting leaves catch a rush that nulls pain and jolts the senses like double shots of espresso. After about 20 minutes, the effects have faded.

Yet media portrayals in both the US and the plant’s native Thailand typically depict a drug that’s either mysteriously menacing or downright satanic.

In America, where kratom (pronounced krah-TOHM) remains legal in most states but stuck on a federal watch list, a Louisiana state senator told a regional TV news station this year that kratom “could wind up killing a child or blowing a child’s mind forever.” An ABC News affiliate in Michigan warns ominously that “what you don’t know could hurt your children.” Most reports casually mention kratom alongside “bath salts,” a totally unrelated synthetic meth-style stimulant banned last year by the federal government.

But as America grapples with a kratom scare — Indiana has banned it and lawmakers in other states hope to follow suit — Thailand is moving in the opposite direction.

Kratom has long flourished in Thailand’s humid south, a region largely inhabited by Muslims. The leaf is traditionally regarded as an organic painkiller and pick-me-up for farmers working the fields. Even after the 1943 ban, the kratom prohibition was loosely observed.

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