Although in the past, various kratom forums have risen and fallen in popularity, Reddit remains a popular online space for kratom discussion. The most famous Reddit kratom sub is r/kratom, which has a following of 123,000 followers (as of 2021). Due to the sheer popularity of kratom reviews (although r/kratom no longer allows kratom vendor reviews), discussions, and questions on the website, it’s good to know a bit about the validity and trustworthiness of the Reddit kratom community.
Reddit currently ranks seventh as the most popular website in the US, but like any online discussion board, its articles may include misinformation and a lack of science/facts. Determining how trustworthy Reddit’s kratom forums are is not always straightforward. Before you can trust Reddit for kratom information, you first have to ask yourself, “Who contributes to kratom threads on Reddit?” and “What should you look out for when looking for information on Reddit about kratom?”
We’ll answer all of these questions and more in our comprehensive guide to Reddit’s kratom forums.
What Are Reddit Kratom Forums?
While there are far more people wondering, “what is kratom?”, you might be one of the kratom enthusiasts wondering, “what is Reddit?”
Reddit is a social website for discussions on just about anything and everything. It is also a news aggregation place where anybody with an account can become a member and a contributor. The registered members can log in and share posts relevant to the countless discussion forums or communities. Reddit currently has 2.8 million subreddits and over 130,000 active communities.
How does Reddit work? In its subreddits, Reddit uses a system of votes (up-votes and down-votes) to rank the posts and comments of its contributing users. The submissions with the most up-votes are ranked higher than the others. Thus, undesired submissions are generally filtered out in large subreddits to present the best quality content (or most popular content and comments) to viewers.
What is a Subreddit?
Similar to other online communities, such as Discord servers and Facebook groups, Reddit allows users to join community discussion forums centered around niche topics.
These niche Reddit communities are called “subreddits.” Examples of subreddit topics include news, interesting facts, gardening, insect identification, and more. You can join these subreddit communities (which are named with “r/” before the subreddit name) to cater your Reddit feed to the things that you’re interested in discussing.
Thus, the definition of Reddit kratom subreddits can be summarized as “specialized threads for niche discussions on the topic of kratom.”
Popular Kratom Subreddits
Among all the subreddits, there is one about kratom too. Both r/kratom and r/quittingkratom make up the most popular kratom Reddit subs. There are also less popular kratom subs on Reddit, such as r/KratomKorner.
In general, people use r/kratom and other kratom forums on Reddit to discuss their experiences with kratom, the best kratom strains and vendors (in r/Vendorsofkratom), personal experiences with the effects of kratom, kratom tea recipes, and more things that websites that sell kratom aren’t permitted to discuss.
Rules For the Reddit Kratom Community
The posts in r/kratom are continuously regulated by the moderators to make sure that they abide by the set rules, which change in response to the legal status of kratom as well as FDA efforts. On the right-hand side of the main kratom subreddit page, there is a menu bar that lays out the rules and procedures that guide all discussions on the platform.
Before you start participating in the kratom community on Reddit as an active member, it is advisable to read those rules and strictly abide by them. Here are some of the most important rules that must be kept in mind while participating in discussions on Reddit kratom:
- Kratom, being a natural botanical herb, cannot be compared with the illegal products in r/kratom. Recreational street drug slang is also forbidden. Anybody doing that is immediately removed as a member of the kratom community on Reddit.
- Be nice with your words and show tolerance towards the views and opinions of other Reddit kratom community members.
- Spreading misinformation is strictly prohibited. The knowledge you share must be based on your own experience. Or if sourced from somebody else, must be authentic and true.
- Soliciting and offering to involve yourself in any illegal activity can get your Reddit ID banned. The Reddit Kratom community does not tolerate this behavior and such participants are removed without any delay. Make sure to follow your state’s kratom laws and be aware of how they differ from state to state (and by county).
- No reviews, spam, or self-promotion is allowed under the guidelines provided by the Reddit moderators.
There are other rules also that must be adhered to. We reiterate the importance of understanding Reddit’s r/kratom rules, as well as kratom laws in your state or country, before participating in the Reddit Kratom discussions. In other words, inform yourself first, speak later.
The FDA’s Restrictions on Kratom Claims for Vendors
There are many reasons why people look for information on kratom on Reddit. Not everyone understands the bigger picture of the online kratom world, but it’s an interesting topic.
For starters, in case you didn’t know, places that sell kratom (such as us) have to follow legal guidelines about what we can and can’t say about kratom online (or via other means). Since the FDA does not approve of kratom for any use, and kratom is not regulated, vendors that sell the botanical can’t make any statements regarding unproven medical claims or alleged health benefits of kratom. For example, the FDA points out the following claims as illegal:
- “The mood elevation qualities of kratom reduces opiate withdrawal effects.”
- “Kratom is also said to have elements that control blood sugar level in the body for diabetic patients.
Obviously, it’s not very professional of kratom websites—or any website for that matter—to list health benefits without any backing claims. Although new research funds have recently been granted to further kratom studies, even as of now, scientific research on kratom remains limited. Many kratom vendors get shut down due to breaking the guidelines set by the FDA.
Thus, it’s really important for places that sell kratom online to avoid making objective claims about kratom’s health benefits, as well as any recommendation on how to use kratom. The FDA refers to such claims as “health fraud scams,” which are illegal.
In elaborating why kratom health claims are illegal, the FDA states the following:
“Health fraud scams like these can pose serious health risks. These products have not been demonstrated to be safe or effective and may keep some patients from seeking appropriate, FDA-approved therapies. Selling these unapproved products with claims that they can treat withdrawal and treat other serious medical conditions is a violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.”
In addition to not approving kratom for medical use and discouraging the public from using kratom in general, the FDA cracks down on health-related marketing of the herb because they state that patient utilization of “unproven treatments could cause patients to forgo or delay FDA-approved treatments for addiction and withdrawal.”
Although no studies thus far can indicate that kratom is safe or beneficial, it is always good to follow the science to learn more about the little-known herb kratom. While one study indicates that the death is >1000 times greater for drugs than for kratom, it’s not to be taken as anything conclusive; other studies have documented cases of kratom use disorder. Due to the dearth of information on kratom, there is a need for more kratom research, as clinical studies, in particular, are lacking.
The FDA states that it is responsible for “helping the public get the accurate, science-based information they need to use medical products and foods to maintain and improve their health,” so reliable data is important. Since some articles claim that even FDA-approved prescription use “flawed” trial research, it’s hard to know when to trust the science. Not all studies, after all, are equally unbiased, and that could affect kratom too.
Thus, the kratom community on Reddit serves as a discussion board for members to discuss kratom studies, kratom experiences, kratom news, and more to get a bigger picture. Kratom Reddit users aren’t bound by the same regulations as places that sell kratom, so they can share info more readily to kratom beginners. While the best place to find information on kratom is in scientific studies, the Reddit Kratom community has played a considerable role in raising awareness for kratom and its legality.
How Big is the Reddit Kratom Community?
The Kratom community on Reddit is also one such community that has been around for quite some time now—the most popular kratom subreddit, r/kratom, was created on April 21st, 2009. As of 2021, r/kratom has 124,000 members. Many of these members remain active in the kratom community, sharing kratom news and kratom legislation changes.
The popularity of kratom wasn’t always what it is, but Reddit’s interest in kratom strongly increased between 2010 and 2017. Most notably, the prevalence of kratom Reddit user mentions reached a climax on August 31st, 2016, the same day the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) temporarily scheduled kratom as a schedule I drug.
Call to Action: Reddit and Kratom Legislation
The Reddit Kratom community consists of many members who are dedicated kratom advocates. If a Reddit user on r/kratom shares a news clip or kratom legality update—such as efforts to change kratom’s legal status in a certain state—the whole kratom community often supports or initiates a call to action. Therefore, Reddit is an important place for the online kratom community to maintain and coordinate a defense against efforts to get it banned.
Instances of Kratom Activism on Reddit
The DEA’s announcement to federally ban kratom in the US was met with backlash from the public, scientists, and Reddit users, who participated in petitions, public demonstrations, and calls by Congress to overrule the decision.
In general, the public’s reaction stressed the view that kratom is not as harmful as the DEA claims and that a kratom ban would hinder promising kratom research. Many testimonials from users providing anecdotal statements of their kratom experiences quickly appeared on Reddit and numerous other websites.
As a result, the DEA eventually reversed its decision to ban kratom, which was an unprecedented event for the administration.
The Reddit Kratom community also spoke up against banning kratom in 2021, when the FDA sat in on an international drug scheduling meeting with the WHO in October. During the month of August 2021, there were many posts in r/kratom (such as this one) urging Reddit users to make comments on their experiences with kratom to try to convince the FDA not to support a global ban on kratom.
The Problem with Kratom Reddit Forums
Although websites that sell kratom (like us) aren’t allowed to make unsubstantiated claims about kratom’s effects, benefits, or uses, Reddit users risk feeding into the misinformation and fear-mongering on kratom by making misleading claims.
Reddit users often make claims about kratom’s benefits or effects without any scientific evidence. While this can help kratom beginners learn the basics of kratom vendors and different strains of kratom (and unfortunately including myths about kratom strains), Reddit users should be more careful about what they say online and what they take to be facts.
Does the FDA Read Reddit Kratom Threads?
In one 2021 kratom Reddit post, a user from r/kratom posted a link to a new scientific article from the International Journal of Drug Policy (December 2021). This article mentions the Reddit sub r/Kratom briefly in the following: “Online surveillance of novel psychoactive substances (NPS): Monitoring Reddit discussions as a predictor of increased NPS-related exposures.”
The original poster summarized the article as such:
“This study demonstrated the utility of social media sites, such as Reddit, as a predictor for future trends in NPS-related exposures. These results provide confirmation that activity on drug use forums in the virtual world can help predict changes in exposures associated with new or re-emerging NPS in the real world. The results warrant further evaluation as a strategy for inclusion in early warning systems.”
The Reddit post then goes on to provide the information that this type of online analysis is not new. FDA commissioners, including Scott Gottlieb (who actively discourages kratom, tweeting in 2021 that he’s convinced that kratom is fuelling the addiction crisis and that Joe Biden should support a federal kratom ban in the US) wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2018 that the FDA was already monitoring social media, discussing kratom specifically:
“To understand why usage patterns are shifting, the FDA used a social media “listening platform” to set up a dashboard to track traditional social media sites (such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, blogs, and forums) that we monitor for conversations. When we find mention of additional substances on social media or elsewhere, we conduct more specific searches for relevant, publicly available conversations through our listening platform, as well as through Reddit, Google, and various online forums that don’t require registration or subscription. These may include forums associated with drug misuse or abuse, such as Bluelight.org and talk.drugabuse.com. A preliminary appraisal of social media topics revealed a shift between 2013 and 2017 from a discussion of legitimate gabapentinoid use for seizures to a focus on misuse and abuse of these drugs.”
In the following paragraphs, the FDA continues to warn against kratom, stating,
“Kratom has also become widely used as a recreational drug, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that calls to poison-control centers citing kratom exposure rose approximately 10-fold between 2010 and 2015. 4 “
Since the FDA may or may not be looking at Reddit kratom forums, let’s discuss two of its claims.
- Kratom as a recreational Drug
- Poison-control centers citing kratom exposure
Although a News Network Survey showed that over 90% of people said that kratom is “very effective” in treating their medical condition and only 1.62% of the 6,000 respondents used kratom recreationally or for curiosity, kratom user surveys aren’t a reliable source of information, and for every survey account, you’ll find contradictions elsewhere. Some Reddit kratom forum users use drug language when discussing kratom, or use adulterated kratom products, which can lead to hospitalization. This can put the whole community at risk, potentially contributing to the spread of misinformation and/or break the Reddit kratom community rules.
It’s really important for Reddit kratom forum users to share scientific data and evidence when discussing the controversies of kratom.
For example, if you look objectively at the data cited by the FDA above, the number of poison control center calls for kratom in 2015 was 250. In contrast, the annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers lists cites 105,457 calls for antihistamine exposure and 287,843 calls for exposure to analgesics.
Since there are many FDA-approved antihistamines, pharmaceutical companies that sell these drugs have the freedom to cite studies and inform the person taking them what to expect. As an unregulated botanical, kratom vendors cannot provide the same extent of information to users (nor do we have as many studies available to cite). Even though the data indicates that there were notably fewer poison control calls for kratom than antihistamine, such data is far more likely to impact the legality or perception of kratom than FDA-approved prescription drugs.
The Kratom Reddit Community: The Takeaway
Reddit kratom forums serve many purposes. The most popular kratom subreddit, r/kratom, is a community for kratom enthusiasts to ask questions about kratom, learn beginner kratom basics, share kratom news articles, discuss kratom legality, and know what to look for when finding the best kratom for sale. However, if you want to find kratom vendor reviews, you’ll have to go to another Kratom subreddit—such as r/Vendors of kratom—or another kratom forum altogether because Reddit no longer allows kratom vendor names to be mentioned.
However, since Reddit is an open community that can be joined by anyone, plenty of Reddit users can make comments on kratom without understanding the science behind Mitragyna speciosa or even knowing the roots of kratom in Southeast Asia.
Therefore, you’re still likely to find false claims about kratom on Reddit and you can’t trust everything you read. As always, it’s a good idea not only to think critically about everything you encounter on Reddit, but to encourage others to keep the Reddit kratom community safe from harmful claims.
Buy Kratom From Vendors That Know the Kratom Community
If you are looking to buy fresh, quality kratom, it’s not only a good idea to look at Reddit kratom discussion threads, but also to make an effort to support reputable kratom vendors who understand the kratom community and the legal problems it faces.
Here at Buy Kratom Bulk USA, we make an effort to be completely transparent with our customers about our kratom for sale to avoid legal problems. We source our kratom from Indonesia, directly from the farmers that grow it. We also update our kratom blog and kratom reviews to keep up-to-date with all of the kratom news and developments.
For more information on kratom, such as kratom trees and the history of kratom, check out our blog and feel free to share this post!
