Ten years ago, kratom the defenders waged a surprisingly successful campaign against a propose Drug Enforcement Administration ban which claimed the obscure Southeast Asian factory posed “an imminent danger to public safety.”
They gained bipartisan allies from Bernie Sanders to Rand Paul, and helped create a billion dollar industry kratom, which has analgesic effects that they say could help combat opiate epidemic as a natural and much safer alternative to pills.
Today, many of these same pro-kratom activists are calling for a ban on products containing concentrates of one of kratom’s active components: 7-hydroxymitragynine, or 7-OH, an ultra-potent extract with opioid-like effects. And this is causing major friction between consumers, sellers and advocates of the two substances.
“This is a full-fledged, chemically manipulated opioid that is now on the market,” says Mac Haddow, a senior public policy fellow at the American Kratom Association, a kratom industry lobbying group. “They are posing as kratom products.”
The proliferation of 7-OH in gummies, capsules and shots bearing brands such as Magic 7OH, 7 O’Heaven and Pure OHMS at thousands of gas stations and convenience stores in recent years has caused growing consternation. Consumers of 7-OH have spoken of its excruciating withdrawal symptoms, and there have been reports polydrug overdoses involving 7-OH and other substances. Some now enter rehab to beat their addiction, while others detox themselves based on advice from Redditors.
The kratom community fears that 7-OH’s bad reputation could drag the entire kratom industry into a regulatory quagmire. But the 7-OH industry has organized against the potential ban, arguing that 7-OH is kratom, although it only appears in trace amounts in the leaves of the kratom plant, and that its benefits as a pain reliever outweigh its potential harms.
The federal government’s anti-7-OH directives have exacerbated tensions between the two parties.
Last July, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the 7-OH industry “sinister” during a press conference in which FDA Commissioner Marty Makary called on the DEA to classify the drug as Category I — the most restrictive class of banned substances. Speaking from the Oval Office on May 11, President Donald Trump publicly approved “Natural 7-OH,” in confusing language that seemed to refer to kratom. On top of all this, it appears that RFK Jr. and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin – who is also pushing for a crackdown on 7-OH – have close ties to a kratom lobbyist (and convicted felon) behind a notorious kratom drink company.
Supporters of 7-OH seeing the substance and the plant from which it is derived as inexorably linked. In April 2025, testimony before Colorado lawmakers discuss how to regulate kratom and 7-OH, Michele Ross, chief scientific advisor of the 7-OH advocacy group 7-HOPE Alliance, wrote“Saying 7-OH is not kratom is like saying caffeine is not coffee or THC is not cannabis. It just doesn’t make sense.”
But unlike coffee, cannabis, and kratom, which have been used for centuries or even thousands of years, 7-OH does not have a long history of human use. It has only been on the market for a few years.
Many products labeled 7-OH contain little-understood compounds whose biological effects are unknown in animals or humans, says Chris McCurdy, a leading kratom researcher and director of the University of Florida’s Center for Translational Drug Development. “So these products, although presented as ‘clean,’ are not clean at all.”
Meanwhile, a dozen states, from California to Vermont, according to to the reports, to have already moved ahead of federal schedule with their own 7-OH bans. Seven of these states have also banned kratom, although Rhode Island recently spilled its ban.
Much of the opposition to the DEA’s proposed kratom ban was rooted How many people have credited homemade kratom tea as a lifesaving DIY escape from fentanyl and opioids. A Johns Hopkins University survey last year suggested that a quarter of people using kratom take it in large quantities to replace opioids, with a lot become dependent. Some find it difficult to tolerate the large amounts of powder needed to overcome withdrawal, making the more potent 7-OH pills potentially useful, although their own side effects from stopping their use could be even worse.
However, most people prefer lower doses of kratom in place of alcohol because of its mild, euphoric effect in the hundreds of tiki-style bars, “entheogenic” lounges, and quirky cafes that serve it. Others ingest it via capsules. “If you take two pills, it’s like a cup of coffee,” podcaster Joe Rogan said in 2019. “I took eight and I was screwed.”
People are increasingly consuming kratom in seltzers like New Brew and Feel Free, the strongest market leader. (Feel Free consumption has generated a subreddit called Quittingfeelfree; 13,000 people visit the community each week, claiming they have unintentionally become addicted to it.)
JW Ross, who changed his name from Jerry Cash, is the founder of Feel Free and is considered to be at the forefront of popularizing kratom drinks. (He had previously been CEO of an oil and gas exploration company. In 2010, he was sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to failing to properly disclose to the SEC that he diverted $10 million from the company.)
Earlier this year, an LLC associated with Feel Free gave $500,000 to MAHA PAC, several months after the Justice Department dismissed its case regarding Feel Free products.
In 2023, federal agents seized 250,000 bottles of Feel Free and a host of other kratom products worth more than $3 million, a raid that was preceded by some people claiming to have suffered horrible withdrawals drinks. The FDA, which participated in the raid, claimed that Feel Free was marketed as a dietary agent, but that there was insufficient information on whether or not kratom posed “a substantial or unreasonable risk of illness or injury.”
Ross has been photographed with RFK Jr., while Mullin, according to a government disclosure form, had a investment for up to $1 million in Feel Free’s parent company, Botanic Tonics. “As Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin acts to ensure full compliance with all ethics and conflict of interest rules,” a DHS spokesperson said via email.
“They’re marketed to kids, they’re gummy bears,” Kennedy said. last year when the United States Food and Drug Administration spear his campaign against the emerging 7-OH sector. “They’re brightly colored, they taste like candy. It’s really a grim, sinister industry.” At the time, the FDA positioned 7-OH as an opioid analogue: “We can and must prevent the next wave of the opioid crisis,” the agency said in its statement. website.
An HHS spokesperson told WIRED that the administration is working to “address the dangers posed by synthetic and highly concentrated 7-hydroxymitragynine (“7OH”) products. via a “robust and scientifically based regulatory framework”.
Jackie Subeck, executive director of the 7-HOPE Alliance, said “it’s hard not to wonder” whether administration members’ ties to Ross “contribute to the ongoing attacks on 7-OH products.” Responsible regulation of 7-OH “is clearly the best answer,” she adds. This could take the form of standardized quality controls and labeling, as well as activity limits. “Banning these products will not eliminate the demand,” Subeck says. “It will simply push consumers toward unregulated and potentially dangerous alternatives, while depriving adults who rely on them of legal access.” »
Some consumers are convinced of the anti-anxiety benefits of 7-OH, even if they struggle to do without it. “I take 20 to 25 milligrams twice a day,” says Chris, a 49-year-old from the Midwest who declined to use his last name for privacy reasons. “It completely changed my life. My employees, my wife, my family say to me: ‘What happened to you? You’re in a really good mood all the time now.” However, he admits: “I once went into withdrawal because I got sick and didn’t take it for a few days. I was sweating and had chills like I had the flu.”
Another 7-OH user, who spoke to WIRED last August, said they struggled with opioid addiction and that the substance helped them cut down on their use.
But if 7-OH is designated a Schedule I drug, that could significantly limit research efforts, McCurdy says. “It could be legally beneficial for many people because of the possibility that it has a safer profile than traditional prescription opioids.” A landmark first trial to study the use of mitragynine, the main psychoactive compound in kratom, to treat opioid use disorder may soon begin after the National Institutes for Health (NIH) announced its investigational new drug (IND) application to the FDA had taken effect June 1st.
Not everyone is present the kratom community supports a ban on 7-OH.
Soren Shade, founder of kratom tea company Top Tree Herbs, admits that bad actors are selling 7-OH and kratom products with irresponsible marketing, careless dosage recommendations, sloppy labeling and unacceptable quality control. “But banning 7-OH because of these companies is like banning cars because Volkswagen cheated on emissions tests or because Toyota had throttle defects.” He thinks products should be regulated and violators punished. “Don’t criminalize the molecule,” he said.
For now, the kratom and 7-OH industry is anxiously waiting to see whether Trump will continue his wave of drug-related executive orders. What is certain is that the same legal ambiguity and anti-FDA libertarianism that helped kratom survive may also have created the s necessary conditions for a much more powerful substance to flourish under its name. Some industry players are also looking to upcoming semi-synthetic compounds, such as 7-OH derivatives MGM-15 and pseudoindoxyl. The regulation fisticuffs game looks set to continue.
Whether or not 7-OH is banned federally, the drug in some ways represents MAHA’s ultimate dilemma: an ultra-potent opioid-like substance with some potential benefits sold through the language of natural wellness — and, for now, in gummy form at the local gas station. “Personally, I wouldn’t demonize the gummy form,” says Haddow, the kratom industry representative who is leading calls to ban 7-OH. “That’s what’s in this candy.”
Manisha Krishnan contributed reporting to this story.
