How Many Kratom Users Are There? New Study Says 2-3 Million, Other Estimates Go As High As 15 Million Kratom Users In The United States

Kratom use is becoming fairly prevalent in the United States, with Kratom available at headshops/smoke shops/gas stations in every city if not within every square mile of a city. This article discusses just how many Kratom users there are in America, since a new scientific study has come out which tries to estimate the total number of Kratom users in the United States.

The scientific study is titled ‘Prevalence and Description of Kratom (Mitragyna Speciosa) Use In The United States: A Cross-Sectional Study‘. Essentially, this study uses a survey of 59,714 adults to estimate the percentage of adults in the United States who take Kratom. Ultimately, the study found that 0.8% of those surveyed used Kratom in the past year, and this would be equivalent to 2.03 million Kratom users in the United States, assuming that the sample of people surveyed in this study is a perfect representation of the American population. The number of people who said they used Kratom in their life was higher at 1.3%, equivalent to 3.35 million Americans who had used Kratom in their life.

Thus, this new study finds that roughly 2-3 million Americans use Kratom. However, the sample of 59,714 adults surveyed in this study is only 0.0238% of the 252 million adults in the United States, so the sample size is extremely small compared to the total size of the adult population in the United States, and therefore it is a big assumption to say that this sample is truly representative of Kratom use in the United States.

A previous estimate based on an American Kratom Association survey in 2016 of 10,000 Kratom users was that 3-5 million Americans use Kratom, although in that survey the sample size was even smaller than the new study, and therefore this is a really rough estimate.

The biggest estimate of the number of Kratom users is 15 million Americans, and this comes from a bulletin published by the American Kratom Association in June 2019. Essentially, they calculated how much Kratom is being shipped into the United States, and then figured out the number of Kratom users in the United States by dividing the amount of Kratom being shipped into the United States by the daily dose on average per Kratom user.

Specifically, the American Kratom Association surveyed the Kratom exporters in Southeast Asia who account for the vast majority of Kratom imports into the United States. On average, 1,950 metric tons of Kratom is imported into the United States every month, which is 1.95 billion grams. The American Kratom Association then assumes that Kratom users take on average 4.2 grams per day, or 125 grams per month, and this yields 15.6 million Kratom users in the United States.

The big assumptions here are that all of the Kratom being imported is instantly sold to Kratom users, and then those Kratom users take that Kratom within that month. These assumptions could be off, since oftentimes Kratom vendors have large stockpiles of Kratom, and Kratom users often stockpile Kratom too, so not all of the Kratom being imported within a month being consumed in the same month. That being said, assuming that Kratom vendors and Kratom users are not continuously increasing their Kratom stockpiles, then the assumption that the 1.95 billion grams of Kratom being imported every month is getting consumed is a good assumption, since if the stockpile levels remain the same, then that means the newly imported Kratom is being consumed every month.

Another assumption is that Kratom users take 4.2 grams of Kratom per day on average. Personally, I take 7-10 grams of Kratom per day, and I have heard of people taking 20-40 grams per day. However, other Kratom users do not take Kratom every day, and skip days, so averaging everything out an estimate of 4.2 grams of Kratom being used per day seems realistic.

Overall, the American Kratom Association’s top-down methodology for estimating the number of United States Kratom users is probably superior to any survey, since all of the surveys that exist so far have too small of a sample size, and the method of estimating Kratom users from the total amount of Kratom being imported into the United States seems quite logical. That being said, it cannot be said with 100% certainty that there really are 15 million American Kratom users, it is simply an estimate, and this estimate is highly dependent on what the average daily dose of Kratom is per American Kratom user, which could be above or below the 4.2 grams/day that the American Kratom Association estimates.

The only thing that can be said for sure is that there are definitely millions of people using Kratom in the United States, with the likely range being between 2 million and 15 million Americans who regularly use Kratom.