said. “There’s no way you can regulate them safely. The risk is too high. They should not be sold in gas stations, in smoke shops, in convenience stores.” A mother’s mission For Susan Eppard, the distinction feels academic. Her son died from mitragynine itself, not from a derivative. To her, both belong under the same ban. “What bothers me about the FDA,” she said, “is they’re strictly going after 7-OH. But it was the kratom plant that killed my son. They’re missing the boat.” These products are not dietary supplements. They’re opioids. Thirteen times stronger than morphine, sold for $6 at your corner store. If you think it’s crazy to have morphine sold in gas stations, the same logic applies here.” GLOBAL KRATOM COALITION EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR MATTHEW LOWE She has no interest in sitting down with the trade groups who defend the plant while disavowing the pills. “They lie, right in front of lawmakers, even when the toxicology reports are in front of them,” she says. “I don’t want to deal with any of them.” Instead, she keeps traveling, testifying in hearing rooms in states she barely knows, joining hundreds of other families who have lost someone. “It’s my entire life now,” she admits. “I don’t get paid. I just try to make sure these laws get passed.” For now, Arizona’s rule sits on the books: 2% 7-OH, no more. But in practice, that rule is scarcely enforced. Vape shops sell out of substances above that limit with little concern from state regulators. Distributors send reps weekly, say Maricopa vape store owners. Stores sell out before the reps return. Mothers bury sons. And in Maricopa, a clerk slips pale tabs into a nondescript paper bag. Tabs he wouldn’t dare take himself, as the line between supplement and opioid blurs one sale at a time.
Added another panelist: “The DEA’s role is critical. If 7-OH becomes a controlled substance, then local officers are empowered to act. Without that, they can’t touch it.” The FDA called its move a matter of protecting the public from what it warned could be the “fourth wave” of the opioid crisis. At a closed press briefing in August, the Global Kratom Coalition gathered reporters to make what they called “a critical distinction.” Their target was not the leaf itself but the concentrated synthetic byproduct now being sold in Arizona vape shops under slang names: “These products are not dietary supplements. They’re opioids,” said Lowe. “Thirteen times stronger than morphine, sold for $6 at your corner store. If you think it’s crazy to have morphine sold in gas stations, the same logic applies here.” Dr. Charles White, a pharmacologist at the University of Connecticut, offered an analogy designed to land with the public: “An apple seed contains amygdalin, which can turn into cyanide. Imagine someone extracted it, converted it to pure cyanide, and sold it as an apple-flavored candy. Is that still an apple? No. And you can’t rely on safety data from apples to make it seem safe.” The coalition underscored the difference in pharmacology. Kratom leaf contains about 50 alkaloids; mitragynine accounts for roughly two- thirds. By contrast, synthetic 7-OH is almost pure alkaloid, up to 100 times the concentration found in natural leaf. “Kratom leaf and 7-OH,” White said, “don’t even live on the same planet in terms of risk.” Panelists pointed to Florida as a model. After its initial 1% cap was exploited with “Florida compliant” 7-OH pills, the state’s attorney general tightened the rule within days, lowering the threshold to 0.04% by dried weight. “Regulators there knew people would look for loopholes,” one panelist said. “They were agile enough to close them. That’s the kind of vigilance it takes.” “Blues.” “Perks.” Others called for a registration system: products logged with certificates of analysis, packaging that avoids cartoons or candy flavors, clear dosing tools to avoid accidental overdoses. “You could walk into a store,” one advocate said, “and immediately see if a product was approved or not. That’s the level of transparency we need.” Yet even within the coalition, there was no path forward for 7-OH itself. “We’ve looked really carefully at these products,” one panelist
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