Kratom in Brazil

Crossing the Atlantic Ocean, in Brazil kratom is nominally listed as a New Psychoactive Substance (NPS), however it remains legal until its inclusion among prohibited substances. Nevertheless, Brazil is still a very protectionist country when it comes to imports, creating several controls and barriers for foreign products as kratom, which we have no information at all about local production. Also, the current Brazilian government is overly conservative and setbacks can be expected in different areas and issues.

Kratom is included as a controlled psychoactive plant-based substance in Brazil by Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency): a NPS, as defined by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). SVS/MS Ordinance 344/1998 is the sanitary standard that provides control measures for drugs, precursors, psychotropic and other substances under special control. Substances subject to special control in Brazil are those listed in the lists in the Annex I of the referred ordinance, which lists are updated by means of a Resolution of the Collegiate Board of Directors (RDC) of Anvisa. The current version, as well as the history of updates, is available at the following address: http://portal.anvisa.gov.br/lista-de-substancias-sujeitas-a-controle-especial.

The new psychoactive substances are inserted in the context of the Decree 5912/06, Art. 14,I,a), which mentions as a competence of Anvisa, to publish updated lists on “substances or products capable of causing dependence”, a nominal listing in which the substance remains licit until included in the lists of prohibited substances, with complex and lengthy updating procedures. 

In other words, among the substances controlled by the aforementioned ordinance, are the NPSs. Kratom is nominally mentioned but hasn’t been included among the substances subject to special control, therefore again: nominal listing remains lawful until inclusion in the lists of prohibited substances. On the other hand, just out of curiosity, the neighboring Argentina has kratom illegal since 2017 by the Decree 69/2017, in agreement with the Law 23.737 of the Penal Code regarding narcotics.

As we would expect, kratom is practically unknown in the South American giant, so if people Google it in Portuguese, unfortunately there is too much biased information regarding the plant (almost all of it). Doing this test in Portuguese, we discovered that some bad news about kratom are basically translations from some media such as BBC, known for its intriguing propaganda against the plant. We can’t wait for the day when a honest approach through scientific articles in each language become more important than articles produced by part of the media moved (and very likely paid) by the Big Pharma interests.