NAGS HEAD, N.C. — At the end of each Dare County Board of Commissioners meeting, each member has a chance to speak about issues impacting them or their constituents. Commissioner Ervin Bateman took the time to call on the board to draft a resolution banning products like kratom, phenibut and tianeptine entirely in North Carolina.
"What we're seeing in recovery court is individuals in the court are switching to these drugs. They have long-lasting effects. They're adverse to your body. They make you nod out. They give some people extremely high feelings, and so forth. It's a substitute for heroin. Some people call it grocery store heroin," said Bateman.
Bateman knows the challenges of addiction.
“I'm also in alcoholic recovery. [I've been] in the recovery community for 34 years. So I've been there, done that, got the trophy, and so I can identify what these folks are going through," he said.
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On top of that, Bateman is on Dare County’s Saving Lives Task Force.
"We have the Saving Lives Task Force we created to try to look at every facet of addiction, whether it's treatment, prevention and treatment, getting folks into a detox, and then aftercare," he said.
Kratom, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, is classified as an “herbal substance that can produce opioid and stimulant-like effects.” The NIDA also reports there can be serious effects from it, including death, but those are rare.
Bateman said he feels products like kratom are an issue in Dare County, specifically being an alternative for people recovering from addiction.
“I think it's an issue with the young people, I do, and they're using it because it's not regulated, it's not illegal," he said. "If you want to be sober, you have to be completely abstinent from everything. That includes kratom.”
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This isn’t the first time the board has attempted to have a resolution passed by the state legislature, but it wasn’t a standalone bill that time. This time, it will be.
"We put it together before and sent it up there, and it got stuck in a bill with legalizing marijuana. They knew that wasn't going to happen, and so it didn't get passed. It got shuffled down," Bateman explained. "So what I suggested was put into a standalone bill, and so it went in front of the House and went in front of the Senate as a standalone and let them vote on it that way, and we feel it will be passed that way. Legislators are behind this."
Though some residents we spoke with think there are bigger issues in the county than this, Bateman feels they need to be proactive in the fight for addiction recovery in Dare County.
"We're proactive. We're trying to do everything we possibly can," he said.
