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Bottles of Kratom and 7-OH sold in Maricopa retail spaces.
Kratom Kronikles Maricopa vape shops seem to sell illegal drugs BY DAVID IVERSEN
Susan Eppard with her son Matthew Eller. He died in 2021 from a Kratom overdose, according to an autopsy.
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“I didn’t have a clue what it was,” she remembered. “But I saw the prices on those bags and thought, well, there’s where all his money went.” Matthew told her it was an herb, no worse than a strong cup of coffee, the kind that made the day easier. “He thought it was for energy,” she recalled. At first, he seemed to believe it. Then he began to crave it. His hands shook. The sleep deepened. Matthew was the youngest of Susan’s six children, the one who made her laugh when the others grew too busy to try. “He was just always so full of life, always healthy, energetic,” she said. “He had the most charismatic personality, you know, lit up a room.” She paused to envision her last holiday with her son. “Every family gathering now just screams with his absence. It can’t be a happy Christmas
HE ALARM ON THE NIGHTSTAND could wake a neighborhood. It was the kind of clock sold to rock stars and linemen. Still, it
could not pull Matthew Eller from the depth he’d learned to reach. His mother, Susan Eppard, bought it when the other alarms failed, when she stood in his doorway in the Michigan mornings and watched the rise and fall of his chest, unsure whether to shake him or let him be. The siren wailed. He slept on. “He would go into a coma-like sleep where he couldn’t wake up,” Susan told InMaricopa . “I bought this sonic alarm clock that had a decibel level of a siren, and he could sleep through it.” Later, after he moved out, she would find the empties. Zip-top bags, light as paper, their prices stamped in a font meant to seem botanical: $12, $22.
October 2025 | InMaricopa.com WWW.MARICOPA-AZ.GOV/MCAN
InMaricopa.com | October 2025
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