Its not anywhere near as bad as the vast majority of gas station drugs. When taken responsibly, from a legitimate source, and not for recreational purposes it is a relatively safe substance. Its been used for thousands of years without issues in its countries of origin.

The things negatively effecting people are intentional or accidental misuse (including taking it with literally anything else, even alcohol), overconsumption, predisposition to substance abuse, overly concentrated products (leading to unintentional overconsumption), and impure sources of the product.

All of those same things can cause harm to people if the substance is something as basic as Asprin. The difference is that Asprin is a significantly more regulated substance rather than being relatively unregulated.

If kratom were only sold as leaf powder it would be virtually impossible to overdose on, as it would make people vomit before they could take too much. That doesnt stop people from taking a safe amount but taking it too often, but realistically it does not have a tendency to be something the average person would want to take all the time. Some people unfortunately do end up with severe addictions to it, but that is almost always concentrated products that have way more alkaloid content than they could consume in its natural form. It also is usually a result of them taking way more of the concentrated product than they should as is clearly labeled on the packaging.

There are a ton of problems with the lack of regulation in the industry, but people who know nothing about it are quick to misunderstand that the substance itself is not some horrific thing on its own account. The shit is not that bad, nor does it ever make anyone fucked up to the extent that alcohol or marijuana can.

Its a fantastic and safe pain reliving medication when used properly and sparingly. For pharmacological reasons I wont bother to expand on, it is basically an opiate that has significantly less addiction potential than any big pharma pain medicine that exists. Personally I dont like the misuse of it by a handful of people being used to argue that it should be banned or is inherently bad. But thats exactly what big pharma wants for obvious reasons. I suffered from substance abuse issues for many years and I have never had any problem safely taking kratom (and then quitting taking it, most importantly) when I need something stronger than an advil or whatever. I genuinely prefer it to ever taking prescribed opiates for that exact reason