The FDA's Low-Handed War On Kratom Continues: Three Major Kratom Vendors Shutdown After FDA Unjustly Uses Civil Forfeiture Powers To Seize Over $5 Million

Even though Kratom is legal in the USA, the FDA has repeatedly used under-handed tactics to attack the Kratom industry. For example, the FDA seizes huge amounts of Kratom at ports all the time via an import alert, and the FDA recently raided a Kratom vendor and seized 34,000 kilos of Kratom, using the justification that Kratom is not FDA approved.

Basically, even though Kratom is legal, the FDA is continuously finding new ways to circumvent the law and attack Kratom companies, and ultimately it seems the FDA is attempting to unilaterally ban Kratom via over-stepping their legal boundaries and seizing power.

The latest FDA atrocity is that 3 major Kratom vendors were forced out of business, including Kratom Crazy, Coastline Kratom, and Best Kratom. Each of these vendors was a major player in the industry until they were obliterated by the FDA.

In particular, the FDA used civil forfeiture powers to seize all of the money that these Kratom vendors had in the bank. $5.8 million was seized from Coastline Kratom, and it is unknown how much was seized from Kratom Crazy and Best Kratom, since that data has not been publicly disseminated yet.

Ultimately, these 3 Kratom vendors immediately went out of business when their bank accounts were seized on November 5 2020.

Even worse, since this was a civil forfeiture action, the 3 Kratom vendors who had their funds seized cannot even fight the case, because in a civil forfeiture case the defendant is the asset which was seized. Literally, the case is between the government and the money itself, and since money cannot speak or hire a lawyer, the case is automatically lost.

Zooming out, it is obvious that the FDA resorted to civil forfeiture because the FDA had no actual case against these Kratom vendors. If the FDA opened an actual case against these vendors it is likely the FDA would have lost since Kratom is legal, and therefore the FDA under-handedly used civil forfeiture powers in order to automatically win the case and destroy the vendors.

Notably, the justification that the FDA gives for the civil forfeiture seizure of the $5+ million is that the 3 Kratom vendors opened up credit card processing accounts under false pretenses. Essentially, these Kratom vendors could not get credit card processing for their actual business, so they had to resort to creating fake businesses in order to be able to accept credit cards.

This is an extreme example of gas-lighting, since the reason that Kratom vendors have a hard time obtaining credit card processing capabilities is due to the FDA pushing banks to blacklist the Kratom industry. Indeed, within the last few months the only major credit card processor for the Kratom industry, T1 Payments, was suddenly shutdown, causing industry-wide economic damage including many vendors being forced out of business.

In other words, the FDA’s actions in the banking industry are the reason why these 3 vendors could not obtain legitimate credit card processing accounts, and when these 3 vendors circumvented the unjust credit card processing situation, the FDA used it as a justification to completely destroy the vendors.

On a final note, the FDA’s attack on these 3 Kratom vendors is ominous for the entire industry. The FDA is using increasingly under-handed techniques to destroy Kratom vendors, and other government branches are doing nothing to reign in the FDA’s abuse of power. This is creating a situation where the FDA can overstep the law and unilaterally inflict massive damage on the Kratom industry, defeating the paradigm of democracy and putting the health of millions of Americans at risk.