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A reporter left with 7-OH tablets in hand. On the back of the pack was a stark label in all caps: “WARNING: Addictive. MAY CAUSE DEPENDENCE. Kratom and its derivatives may cause addiction and serious side effects.” Red Star Vapor at Edison Pointe doesn’t carry 7-OH, a manager said. Distributors are offering, but so far, they’ve rejected them. InMaricopa shared its findings with Matt Lagrange of the Global Kratom Coalition, an industry-backed group that bills itself as both advocate and watchdog. The coalition funds lobbying to preserve access to kratom leaf, while publicly urging a crackdown on synthetic products like 7-OH. Its members include vendors, consumers and a rotating bench of scientists who argue the plant has been used safely for centuries. “Yes, those products are above the legal limit,” said Lagrange, confirming the products InMaricopa bought shouldn’t have been sold. “The law is clear,” the Arizona Department of Health Services said in response to an InMaricopa request to verify that the drugs were in fact over the legal limit. “No product may contain a level of 7-OH exceeding 2% of its alkaloid fraction.” Yet the products sit on shelves anyway, marketed with names that wink at prescription opioids, sold at a markup when compared to traditional kratom. Enforcement is more theory than practice. InMaricopa ’s findings sparked an ADHS investigation. The agency also issued a statement explaining that the Arizona Kratom Consumer Protection Act does not mandate regular inspections or testing but instead prohibits products above the 2% 7-OH threshold. Enforcement is typically triggered by con- sumer complaints or suspected violations, with local law enforcement able to act on a case-by- case basis. Retailers and distributors are expect- ed to use independent labs to ensure compliance. State Rep. T.J. Shope, the Republican who represents Maricopa, said he believes Arizona may need to go further than the current law. “At this point, we’re reviewing the FDA’s recommendations and considering whether legislation may be needed to bring Arizona into alignment. At the very least, we want to ensure that children cannot access these items. I’ll be monitoring the situation closely as I prepare leg- islation to introduce when the session begins in January,” said Shope in September. Enforcement at the local level has been just as passive as the state. Responsibility for the Arizona Kratom Consumer Protection
advocate, trying to raise awareness in her son’s name. Matthew. People will tell you kratom helps, eases pain, quells anxiety, reins in the cravings left behind by opioids. Susan has heard it all. She keeps her face neutral when they say it, the way you do when you’ve buried your ambition for a repeat debate and don’t care to exhume it. “I’m actually in a group with hundreds of people whose loved ones died from kratom,” she said. “And many of them, it was just the powder. Not the high-potent stuff. Just the powder. “Kratom sucked his soul out before it even took his life,” she said. Arizona’s law and its loopholes Closer to home, in Arizona, the line between
or Thanksgiving anymore. It’s all just the absence of Matthew.” He died Nov. 10, 2021. The autopsy left no doubt. Cause of death: The toxic effects of mitragynine, the chief alkaloid in kratom. Nothing else. No fentanyl hidden where even the cautious miss it, no cocktail of pills. Just the powder he thought was safe enough to buy at a corner store. “I had never heard of it until he moved out,” Susan said. “I didn’t even know he was using it. And even after I researched it, I had no idea it could kill him.” Susan Eppard has never been to Maricopa. But when InMaricopa wrote about another family dealing with the effects of kratom, she reached out. She is something of a nationwide
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‘GAS STATION HEROIN’ RUINED MY MARRIAGE
Friese, 53. “By the end, he wasn’t even getting high. He just needed it to feel normal.” Within months, his use ballooned to more than $100 a day. Bank accounts quickly emptied. Family memorabilia were pawned to make up the deficit, to buy more kratom. Friese pulled credit cards from her husband’s wallet and monitored bank accounts daily. His addiction found workarounds, she said. The evidence was everywhere: hundreds of empty blue bottles tucked behind TVs, in drawers, in boxes in the garage. When he tried to quit, the withdrawals hit hard: restless legs, vomiting, shaking and what he described as “crawling out of my skin.” Friese sent him to rehab, once in-state and once in Wisconsin, where kratom is illegal. He’s now in a 90-day program in California. Friese is speaking publicly about her
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“This isn’t just about my family,” she told InMaricopa last month. “It’s about the next kid who picks this up at a gas station thinking it’s like an energy drink. They have no idea what it can do to them.” Arizona’s Kratom Consumer Protection Act limits how much of a powerful chemical called 7-OH can be in the product — no more than 2%. However, Friese says her husband bought more potent kratom from Maricopa retailers. She says she’s prepared to take her fight to lawmakers or even corporate headquarters of retailers selling the drinks. “If something good can come out of what my family has been through,” she said, “it’s making sure someone else doesn’t lose their family over a drink you can buy with your gas.”
From the outside, Andrea Friese’s marriage seemed unshakable: two decades together, children, a home in Glennwilde and the quiet rhythm of a family finding its way. Over the last four years, a $10 blue bottle from a Circle K was dismantling it. It started with a casual recommendation from a life coach to her husband: Skip prescription painkillers, avoid opioids and instead try a “natural” mood enhancer made from kava and kratom. Kratom, a plant whose compounds bind to the brain’s opioid receptors, can bring mild relaxation for some. For Friese’s husband, it brought relentless addiction. “He’d wake up in the middle of the night shaking, take a drink and go back to bed,” said
“natural supplement” and “street drug” has been sketched in statute for years, though you wouldn’t know it stepping into a vape shop. The Kratom Consumer Protection Act, passed in 2019, made it illegal to sell any product containing more than 2% 7-hydroxymitragynine, the concentrated alkaloid known as 7-OH. The law was meant to draw a boundary: Kratom leaf could stay, the stronger synthetic products could not. But the shelves tell a different story. At The Smoker’s Edge on John Wayne Parkway, clerks said they could barely keep 7-OH in stock. “It sells out fast,” a clerk admitted as InMaricopa staff went inside to see how easy it is to buy 7-OH. “We’re having trouble keeping it.” Few spaces remained. At Vape Etc. on John Wayne Parkway, a young clerk bagged a set of small, pale tabs with the same casual speed he used for bongs and vape juice. When asked if he’d ever tried them, he laughed. “Hell no,” he said. “I stay away from it. It’s easy to get addicted to.” The package on PRESS’D Extra Strength warns that it may be habit forming, cause addiction and even death.
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InMaricopa.com | October 2025
October 2025 | InMaricopa.com
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