WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Board of Health on Monday began a discussion about regulating the sale of kratom products in town.

 

The board's monthly meeting came four days after the governor's office in Boston announced that the commonwealth temporarily will designate kratom, also known by its chemical name and marketed with the term "7-OH" as a Schedule I drug, greatly restricting its sale in Massachusetts as of Aug. 28.

 

The board already was meeting virtually with the director of South County's Tri-Town Health Department on a different matter. Jim Wilusz stayed on the conference call to discuss the implications of Gov. Maura Healey's Thursday announcement on 7-OH, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has called potentially "The Next Wave of the Opioid Epidemic."

 

Wilusz said he already was working on draft regulations for Tri-Town based, in part, on an ordinance enacted by Northampton before Gov. Maura Healey's announcement. But in the wake of the announcement and the classification of kratom as a Schedule I drug, he might have to change the language of the proposed ordinance.

 

Healey's emergency order of Aug. 14 is intended to "give local boards of health and other municipal officials additional authority to take enforcement action against retailers selling kratom products," according to a news release announcing the move.

 

"I was actually hoping they were going to pass a statewide ban on this thing," Wilusz said. "This goes into effect Aug. 28, so effective the 28th, they can't have kratom in the entire state on their shelves with a one-year [period] to give not only boards of health but, possibly, the Legislature, time to enact regulation.

 

"I don't know if the intent is to work on a statewide Department of Public Health regulation, which would be ideal, where you would have uniformity across the entire state. It does authorize the boards of health to enact local regulations."