I agree the effects are nothing like hard opiates, but strictly speaking, kratom does contain opiate agonists.

It pisses me off that the FDA feels the need to control that people put in their bodies. What really infuriates me is when the FDA restricts access to drugs that can actually help people break their dependance on much worse drugs.

Fact is, kratom as a powdered leaf has its own built-in anti-abuse system. The leaf is really hard on the digestive system, and you have to take grams of the powder to get an effect, even with no tolerance. So people that try and abuse the stuff generally just end up puking the stuff back up. The only people that continue to use those high doses are those that would have nausea anyway, from the withdrawals caused by other drugs they're trying to get off of.