A series of tragic, high-profile deaths, including two students at the University of Mississippi in September, has focused national attention on kratom, an opioid-like drug widely available at gas stations and convenience stores around the country. A postmortem examination of the two Ole Miss students, Aidan Hamilton and Robert Strang, found one of kratom’s active chemicals in their blood. Nationally, the popular kratom drink “Feel Free” has received attention as users report dangerous side effects and addictiveness.
Given these apparent dangers, it’s worth asking: Why is kratom easily and cheaply available? Indeed, why is it available to buy at all? The answer owes partly to its relative obscurity and partly to the lobbying campaign waged by the industry to keep the drug unregulated at the federal level.
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The good news is that states don’t have to wait on Washington. They can act on their own to ban kratom now—as several have already done.
Kratom comes from the leaves of a tropical evergreen tree native to Southeast Asia. While it acts as a stimulant at low doses, at higher doses it mimics the effects of opioids—hence its nickname, “gas station heroin.” Its active chemicals, mitragynine and 7-OH (7-hydroxymitragynine), act on the same brain receptors as opioids. As with opioids, cessation of the drug causes a complex of dangerous symptoms ranging from pain to fever and worse.
And, as with opioids, use of kratom at any level carries significant risk. Federal data connect the drug to more than 5,200 overdose deaths between 2020 and 2024. That’s unsurprising: research links mitragynine with severe heart arrhythmias and toxicity to human neuronal cells. The chemical 7-OH can be 13 times stronger than morphine, explaining why one study found dependency in more than half of regular users.
Kratom is a prime candidate, in other words, for the most restrictive federal scheduling and aggressive federal and state-level bans. In fact, in 2016 the Drug Enforcement Administration tried to use its emergency authority to classify kratom as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act. That would label it as having no acceptable medical uses and a high risk of abuse—the most restrictive classification.
But after industry lobbying, the Obama administration backed down. Lobbyists also squashed a second effort to ban kratom during the first Trump administration.
As a result, the drug remains widely available, subject to a patchwork of state and local laws and regulations. For example, in Oxford, Mississippi, where Hamilton and Strang died, kratom is illegal. Other cities and counties across Mississippi have also banned the drug. But it remains legal and “regulated” at the state level under the Kratom Consumer Protection Act (KCPA), an industry-backed law that effectively vitiates city ordinances.
Supporters of such state kratom laws have argued that they create safe, regulated markets. They do not. A study published this year in Addiction examined kratom cases reported to U.S. poison centers from 2010 to 2023. It found no significant difference between states with kratom consumer-protection laws and those without them. But states with kratom consumer-protection laws saw more than four times the rate of life-threatening outcomes and deaths—and more than twice the rate of poison center cases and hospitalizations—compared with states that banned kratom outright.
Despite all this, the federal government is still struggling to act. In July, acting on a 2025 recommendation from the Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration announced its intent to temporarily add 7-OH, one of kratom’s active compounds, to the list of Schedule I prohibited substances. It was a partial step that would have pulled most 7-OH products off the shelves while leaving other kratom products intact.
Unfortunately, it never happened. On October 9, the agency announced a revised proposal that doubles the amount of 7-OH a product can contain before it is treated as a Schedule I drug and exempts products mostly comprised of natural kratom—even those with high 7-OH content.
Both proposals are based on the fundamentally false premise that natural kratom and 7-OH can be neatly separated into two categories, one safe and one dangerous. That’s an argument advanced by the kratom industry. Its main lobbying outfit, the American Kratom Association (AKA), routinely claims that “natural” or “whole plant” kratom is a safe and even beneficial drug to use. The group claims that only “synthetic” products with 7-OH in them are unsafe. But given that humans metabolize mitragynine—the main alkaloid in “whole plant” kratom—into 7-OH, the distinction between natural and synthetic is largely academic.
Nonetheless, the industry spends big to persuade lawmakers of its views. The AKA has dropped more than $440,000 on federal lobbying this year so far. In 2024, it spent $550,000, and in 2025, $800,000. The group has also nearly doubled its lobbyist staff since 2024. Judging from state and federal laws and regulatory actions, these investments are paying off.
The industry also enjoys close connections with the White House. Per financial disclosures, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin owns a stake worth as much as $1 million in Botanic Tonics, the manufacturer of the kratom drink Feel Free. Secretary Mullin even urged FDA officials to take down health warnings about kratom on the agency’s website.
The current kratom posture of the White House is dangerously laissez-faire. Nonetheless, one thing remains certain: kratom, much like marijuana, cannot be safely regulated, no matter what the industry claims.
That means states need to step up. Massachusetts and Kentucky have already done so, passing kratom bans of their own. Until more states follow their lead, more people—including more kids—are going to die.