A decade ago, kratom advocates fought a surprisingly successful campaign against a proposed Drug Enforcement Administration ban that claimed the obscure Southeast Asian plant posed “an imminent hazard to public safety.”

They won bipartisan allies from Bernie Sanders to Rand Paul, and helped create a billion-dollar industry out of kratom, which has pain-relieving effects they said could help fight the opioid epidemic as a far safer, natural alternative to pills.

Now, many of those 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 it’s causing major friction amongst consumers, sellers, and advocates of both substances.

“This is a chemically manipulated, full-blown opioid that is now in the marketplace,” claims Mac Haddow, the senior public policy fellow at the American Kratom Association, a kratom industry lobby group. “They masquerade as kratom products.”

The proliferation of 7-OH in gummies, capsules, and shots with brand names like Magic 7OH, 7 O’Heaven, and Pure OHMS across thousands of gas stations and corner stores over the past few years has caused increasing consternation. Consumers of 7-OH have spoken of its excruciating withdrawal symptoms, and there have been reports of polydrug overdoses involving 7-OH and other substances. Some are now entering rehab to overcome their dependency, while others are self-detoxing 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 prohibition, claiming 7-OH is kratom, despite only appearing in trace amounts within the leaves of the kratom plant, and that its benefits as an analgesic outweigh its potential harms.

Anti-7-OH directives from the federal government have exacerbated tensions between the two sides.

Last July, US Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. described the 7-OH industry as “sinister” at a press conference where FDA commissioner Marty Makary called for the DEA to categorize the drug as Schedule I—the most restrictive class of banned substances. Speaking from the Oval Office on May 11, President Donald Trump publicly endorsed “natural 7-OH,” in confusing remarks which appeared to refer to kratom. On top of all that, it appears that both RFK Jr. and Department of Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin—who is also pushing for a 7-OH crackdown—have strong ties to a kratom lobbyist (and convicted criminal) behind a notorious kratom drinks company.

Proponents of 7-OH see the substance and the plant it’s derived from as inexorably linked. In April 2025 testimony to Colorado legislators debating how to regulate kratom and 7-OH, Michele Ross, the chief scientific adviser to the 7-OH advocacy group 7-HOPE Alliance, wrote, “To say 7-OH is not kratom is to say caffeine is not coffee or THC is not cannabis. It simply does not make sense.”

But as opposed to coffee, cannabis, and kratom—which have been consumed for centuries if not thousands of years—7-OH does not have a long history of human use. It’s only been on the market for a few years.

Many of the products that are labeled 7-OH contain little-understood compounds with unknown biological effects in animals or humans, says Chris McCurdy, a leading kratom researcher and director of the University of Florida’s translational drug development core. “So, these products, while represented as ‘clean’ are anything but.”

Meanwhile, a dozen states, from California to Vermont, according to reports, have already moved ahead of federal scheduling with their own 7-OH bans. Seven of those states have also banned kratom, although Rhode Island recently overturned its prohibition.

Much of the opposition to the DEA’s proposed kratom ban was rooted in how many people have credited home-brewed kratom tea as a lifesaving DIY off-ramp from fentanyl and opioids. A Johns Hopkins University survey last year suggested that a quarter of people who consume kratom take it in large quantities as an opioid replacement, with many becoming dependent. Some struggle to stomach the hefty amounts of powder required to beat withdrawal, making the more potent 7-OH pills potentially useful, though their own side effects from stopping use could be even worse.

Most people, however, enjoy lower doses of kratom in place of alcohol for its mild, euphoric buzz at the hundreds of tiki-style bars, “entheogenic” lounges, and quirky cafés 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 fucked up.”

People are increasingly consuming kratom in seltzers like New Brew and Feel Free, the more potent market leader. (Feel Free consumption has spawned a subreddit called Quittingfeelfree; 13,000 people visit the community each week, claiming they had become unwittingly 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 the popularization of kratom drinks. (He had previously been the CEO of an oil and gas exploration company. In 2010, he was sentenced to prison after he pleaded guilty to having failed to properly disclose to the SEC that he diverted $10 million from the business.)

Earlier this year, an LLC associated with Feel Free gave $500,000 to the MAHA PAC, several months after the Department of Justice dismissed its case involving Feel Free’s products.

In 2023, federal agents seized 250,000 bottles of Feel Free and a slew of other kratom products worth more than $3 million, a raid that was preceded by some people alleging they suffered horrendous withdrawals from the drinks. The FDA, which was involved in the raid, claimed Feel Free was being marketed as a dietary agent but that there was inadequate information on whether or not kratom presents “a significant or unreasonable risk of illness or injury.”

Ross has been photographed with RFK Jr., while Mullin, according to a government disclosure form, has had an investment of 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 says over email.

“They’re marketed for children, they’re gummy bears,” Kennedy said last year when the US Food and Drug Administration launched its campaign against the nascent 7-OH sector. “They’re bright colors, they’re candy-flavored. This is really a sinister, sinister industry.” At the time, the FDA positioned 7-OH as analogous to opioids: “We can and must prevent the next wave of the opioid crisis,” the agency said on its website.

An HHS spokesperson tells WIRED the administration is working to “address the dangers posed by synthetic and highly concentrated 7-hydroxymitragynine (‘7OH’) products.” via a “strong, scientifically grounded regulatory framework.”

Jackie Subeck, the executive director of 7-HOPE Alliance, believes “it is hard not to question” whether the connections between members of the administration and Ross “are contributing to the ongoing attacks on 7-OH products.” Responsible regulation of 7-OH “is clearly the better answer,” she adds. This would potentially take the form of standardized quality and labeling controls, as well as potency limits. “Banning these products will not eliminate demand,” Subeck says. “It will simply push consumers toward unregulated and potentially unsafe alternatives while taking away legal access from adults who rely on them.”

Some consumers are convinced of the anti-anxiety benefits of 7-OH, even if they struggle to go without it. “​​I take 20 to 25 milligrams twice a day,” says Chris, a 49-year-old from the Midwest who did not want to use his surname for privacy reasons. “It completely changed my life. My employees, my wife, my family are like, ‘What happened to you? You're in such a great mood all the time now.” However, he admits: “I went into withdrawal once because I got sick, and didn't take it for a couple of days. I was sweating and had chills like I had a flu.”

Another 7-OH consumer, who spoke to WIRED last August, says they have struggled with opioid dependence and that the substance has helped them cut down their use.

But if 7-OH is designated as a Schedule I drug, it could significantly limit research efforts, says McCurdy. “It could be of legal and proper benefit to many people because of the possibility that it may have a safer profile than traditional prescription opioids.” A landmark early trial to investigate the use of mitragynine, the primary psychoactive compound in kratom, for opioid-use disorder could soon get underway after the National Institutes for Health (NIH) announced that its investigational new drug application (IND) to the FDA had taken effect on June 1.

Not everyone in the kratom community supports a 7-OH ban.

Soren Shade, the founder of kratom tea company Top Tree Herbs, concedes that bad actors are selling 7-OH and kratom products with irresponsible marketing, reckless dosing recommendations, sloppy labeling, and unacceptable quality control. “But banning 7-OH because of those companies is like banning cars because Volkswagen cheated on emissions tests or because Toyota had accelerator defects.” He thinks the products should be regulated and the violators punished. “Don’t criminalize the molecule,” he says.

For now, the kratom and 7-OH industry are waiting with bated breath to see whether Trump will continue his flurry of drug-related executive orders. What’s for sure is that the same legal ambiguity and anti-FDA libertarianism that helped kratom survive may also have created the conditions for a far stronger substance to flourish under its name. Some in the industry are also pivoting to the next semi-synthetic compounds, like 7-OH derivatives MGM-15 and pseudoindoxyl. The game of regulatory whack-a-mole looks set to continue.

Whether or not 7-OH will be federally prohibited, the drug in some ways represents the ultimate MAHA dilemma: an ultra-potent opioid-like substance with some potential benefits sold via the language of natural wellness—and, for now, in gummy form at the local gas station. “I personally wouldn’t demonize the gummy form,” says Haddow, the kratom industry representative who is leading calls to ban 7-OH. “It's what's in that gummy.”

Manisha Krishnan contributed reporting to this story.