On July 29th, 2025, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. took the stage at a press conference in DC to make a major drug policy announcement: The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and the HHS were recommending the placement of 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH), a federally legal opioid found in small quantities in kratom, into Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act.
Schedule I is a legal classification reserved for drugs with no accepted medical benefits and a high potential for abuse. The placement of any drug into this category makes it difficult to research the drug, and easy to lock people behind bars for distribution or possession.
The recent 7-OH scheduling announcement, surprisingly, has enjoyed widespread support from some of the same lobbying groups that have fought to keep kratom legal in the past, and the kratom world is now divided into two warring camps: those who support scheduling 7-OH as a dangerous drug (while still defending natural kratom leaf as an herbal wellness supplement), and those who believe that once the government bans a kratom derivative, it won’t be long before they come after the herb itself.
To understand why and how this split happened, we have to look behind the curtain at the government agencies that regulate these drugs, and the lobbying groups that fund the scientists who research them.
Kratom and 7-OH: What Are They?
Kratom is an herbal substance derived from the leaves of a tropical tree in the coffee family. It’s commonly sold throughout the US in the form of powders, capsules, extracts, and teas, and contains psychoactive compounds that produce both stimulant-like effects at low doses and opioid-like, sedative effects at high doses. Over 10 million Americans use kratom products to boost energy and focus, elevate mood, manage chronic pain, and cope with opioid withdrawal symptoms. Kratom is a multi-billion-dollar industry in the United States, and is projected to grow in the coming years.
7-OH naturally occurs in small quantities in kratom leaves, and has been on the radar of scientists who study the plant for years. But in the last two years, 7-OH extract products have spread like wildfire. More powerful than natural kratom leaf products and more selective for opioid receptors, these high-potency 7-OH isolate products are still legally sold online as well as at gas stations and smoke shops.
The First Attempt to Ban Kratom
In August 2016, the DEA announced its intention to ban kratom and place its two primary alkaloids, mitragynine and 7-OH, into Schedule I. In response, kratom advocacy groups mobilized to prevent this. “I told them the chances [of changing the DEA’s mind] were zero,” Mac Haddow, the Senior Fellow for Public Policy of the American Kratom Association (AKA), told me in an interview. “And I was wrong, because of the outcry from consumers, which at the time probably numbered somewhere in the three million range in the United States.”
The AKA raised over $400,000 in just a month, five times what they usually raised in a year. Haddow mobilized a bipartisan coalition of representatives in Congress, and legislators ranging from the far-right Orrin Hatch to the democratic socialist Bernie Sanders signed a letter to the DEA, arguing against this scheduling.
The DEA listened. They lifted the emergency scheduling notice and opened a public comment period, at which point tens of thousands of people responded to testify about how kratom had helped them. In 2018, HHS wrote to the DEA to rescind its scheduling recommendation. While a few states have banned kratom in the years since 2016, a greater number of states have worked with the AKA to pass “Kratom Consumer Protection Acts”, and the plant remains federally legal to this day.
A New Drug Emerges
As early as 2019, the AKA advocated for limits on the maximum amount of 7-OH that could be present in kratom extract products. But for a while, this issue remained largely theoretical; there were simply no products on the market with a substantial quantity of 7-OH.
In 2023, this changed abruptly. High-potency 7-OH isolate products began to appear online as well as at gas stations and smoke shops. In 2016, the kratom world was unified in opposition to a federal ban. But the AKA, and newer organizations like the Global Kratom Coalition (GKC), have celebrated and in some cases even lobbied for 7-OH scheduling. They’ve justified their decision by claiming that 7-OH is not a kratom product, and poses unique risks that leaf kratom does not.
But not all kratom consumers and advocacy groups agree with scheduling 7-OH. And given that leaf kratom contains this alkaloid, there is a non-trivial possibility that federal and state governments will once again go after leaf kratom, and the millions of Americans who use it, in the near future.
7-OH: Kratom’s Wild West
According to Jeff Smith, the policy director for a 7-OH lobbying group called Holistic Alternative Recovery Trust (HART), over a billion doses have been consumed since 7-OH products hit shelves, likely by more than a million Americans.
HART Director Vince Sanders, whose company CBD American Shaman manufactures a substantial amount of the 7-OH currently on the market, has not shied away from making public proclamations that 7-OH represents an improved, enhanced version of kratom. In 2024, he messianically declared that once kratom users try 7-OH, “they won’t take kratom again.” He argued that pushback from the leaf kratom industry was equivalent to “buggy manufacturers trying to stop cars”, or “traditional telephone providers that don’t want to give up the phone plugged into the wall against a cell phone provider.”
Many scientists, however, see 7-OH products as more like the isolation of morphine from opium than the development of the automobile or cell phone. The 7-OH industry is also the wild west in terms of product transparency. Dr. Chris McCurdy, a kratom scientist at the University of Florida whose lab ran tests on a variety of 7-OH products, told me that none of the liquid shots he tested actually contained 7-OH.
Obviously, the lack of regulation on product transparency and aggressive marketing towards addicts and other vulnerable populations are not ethical business practices. But does this mean the molecule itself should be banned? Should Americans who use 7-OH be robbed of the choice to use a substance that may work for them?
The Human Cost of Scheduling 7-OH
Dr. Kirsten Smith, a research scientist who has run studies on kratom for years at NIDA and now at Johns Hopkins, was vocally skeptical of 7-OH products until recently. Now, however, she approaches the subject with more nuance, having not seen the degree of adverse events she initially expected. While she agrees that 7-OH companies have not behaved ethically, she does not believe the problem is unique to the industry.
Smith, having spent time in prison during her youth before her career as a research scientist, speaks about the human cost of drug prohibition with a directness that is unusual for scientists. “The term scheduling is kind of a euphemism for what we know it is. It’s criminalizing something, right? And as someone who has been through the criminal justice system, I do not take that lightly. And I am sorry to say this, but I think making it a criminal offense is not the direction that we need to go in. That is not something that I’m going to be able to change my mind about. It’s just not possible.”
Smith sees 7-OH as a lifeline for some heroin or fentanyl addicts who are unable or unwilling to access medical interventions like methadone or suboxone. And at a time when opioid overdoses still claim the lives of nearly 100,000 Americans annually, largely from an unregulated supply of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, “lifeline” might not be an exaggeration.
“For many people in this population, there’s not some universe in which they’re just going to take an FDA-approved pharmacotherapy,” Smith told me. Methadone, for example, requires daily visits to a clinic and may not be accessible to people without reliable transportation or health insurance.
“I want to be very clear,” said Smith. “I have never said that kratom is safe. I’ve never said 7-OH is safe. But we don’t have clear epidemiological data to show that this is truly a hazard to public health.”
A Lobbying Group Puts Pressure on Scientists
Until this year, the AKA took a moderate stance on the issue of 7-OH products, arguing that they should be legal and regulated, provided they were not marketed as kratom. But other groups, like the Global Kratom Coalition (GKC), were already taking a hard line against 7-OH.
The GKC was co-founded by JW Ross, CEO of Botanic Tonics, which manufactures a popular kratom-kava cocktail called Feel Free. In May 2024, the GKC donated $250,000 to the University of Florida, earmarked for scientific research conducted by Dr. Chris McCurdy into the safety and therapeutic efficacy of kratom. McCurdy is one of the most prolific kratom scientists in the world, with dozens of papers to his name dating back decades to the mid-2000s.
Yet none of his freely accessible publications in the last year and a half have disclosed that funding, or presented it as a potential conflict of interest. And according to emails obtained during research for this article, the Global Kratom Coalition has been far from hands-off in its correspondence with scientists, including McCurdy.
In April 2024, a group of kratom scientists, including McCurdy and Kirsten Smith, released a document called “Statement on the science of kratom products and their US regulation.” The document, published on both the AKA and GKC websites, was framed as unbiased and guided by state-of-the-art science. But the GKC—including Executive Director Matt Lowe and Botanic Tonics CEO JW Ross—were extensively involved in shaping the language used in the statement.
In one exchange, Ross lobbied to remove a sentence about the potential risks of combining kratom with other psychoactive substances (much like the formula used to make Feel Free). In 2023, a class action lawsuit alleged that Feel Free products were marketed as a safe alcohol alternative, while not adequately being labeled as containing kratom. The company has since settled the lawsuit and issued an apology, saying they “fell short of the high standards of transparency and consumer education that our company now champions.”
The GKC spent much of 2024 advocating for state laws that would place strict limits on 7-OH concentrations in kratom products. One such bill was AB 2365 in California, which would have capped 7-OH concentrations at 1% of the total alkaloid content of any product. The AKA opposed the legislation, claiming it would unfairly benefit Botanic Tonics and make it harder for other kratom companies to compete in the California market.
Around this time, according to these emails, JW Ross attempted to get Mac Haddow to step down from his position at the AKA and join the GKC by offering him a raise: twice whatever the AKA was paying him. Haddow responded by saying he was “not for sale”.
The legislation was also opposed by HART, who advocated for a version of the bill that would have allowed 7-OH manufacturers to keep selling their high-potency 7-OH products.
On multiple occasions, GKC executives put pressure on scientists to make statements in support of AB 2365. On June 5, 2024, Lowe reached out to McCurdy to ask him and his colleagues to make a statement in opposition to HART’s proposal. “More weight is added to the discussion when it comes from the unbiased, highly respected scientific community who actually understand the issue at hand,” wrote Lowe in one email. “The legislatures are confused by kratom and do not know who to trust.”
But can McCurdy, whose lab received substantial funding from an anti-7OH lobbying group, be credibly considered unbiased? One source, who chose to remain off the record, alleged that JW Ross (a personal friend of HHS Secretary RFK Jr.) offered to help McCurdy get a high-ranking position at the FDA, provided that McCurdy continued collaborating with the GKC agenda.
To his credit, McCurdy regularly established firm boundaries with the GKC, including refusing to accept a flight on a chartered private plane to meet with Florida state legislators. And he denied the accusation that anything quid pro quo had been offered. “Amongst many people in the kratom industry, they thought it would be awesome if there was a way to get a scientist like myself into the FDA,” he explained. But “there were never any strings attached and there has never been any [specific] position discussed.”
When I told McCurdy that I had a strong personal bias against drug prohibition, he nodded in agreement. “I think there’s always some misunderstanding that I’m totally against 7-hydroxy and I’m not,” he said. “I think it has great potential, if it’s developed right.”
Yet he has lent critical support to the FDA’s request to place the drug in Schedule I, which would make research into its medical uses much more difficult. In fact, he was an early advocate of 7-OH scheduling, months before the FDA and HHS would make their announcement.
In October 2024, McCurdy wrote to Lowe, saying that in order to keep 7-OH isolate products off the market, there needed to be a kratom equivalent of the initial 2018 farm bill, which legalized hemp (provided the THC content was less than 0.3%), while keeping marijuana in Schedule I. Lowe wrote back, saying “We are working on something like this.”
This is exactly what happened; the FDA’s request to place 7-OH products into Schedule I will, ostensibly, not apply to leaf kratom, despite leaf kratom containing small quantities of 7-OH.
The American Kratom Association Changes Its Tune on 7-OH
For most of 2024 and into 2025, the AKA, still the largest kratom advocacy group in the world, remained at odds with JW Ross and the GKC, and kept a softer stance on 7-OH. As recently as January 2025, Haddow was still publicly criticizing the GKC’s agenda, arguing that “an organization that is a trade organization should not interfere with consumer access for the market advantage of one product or another”. He also publicly accused the GKC of hiring paid protestors who “did not even know why they were there” to protest an AKA meeting with the Rhode Island Governor’s office.
So why did the AKA eventually change its tune and come out strongly against 7-OH? According to Haddow, the primary reason was dishonesty on the part of HART, the 7-OH lobbying group. “We signed an agreement with them,” explained Haddow. “They assured us that they had all of the required safety. They agreed that they would no longer manufacture or market these products as kratom products. In January of 2025, their lead scientist, Dr. Kampmeyer, disclosed that in fact, they had no science to back their products. And secondly, their commitment to not market their products as kratom was violated on the false claim that the FDA regulations required them to call them kratom products.”
A source close to HART, who preferred to remain off the record, paints a different picture. According to this source, the pressure came from within; OPMS and Mit45, two of the largest leaf kratom companies, threatened to stop contributing to the AKA and give that support to the GKC instead, unless Haddow took a more decisive anti-7OH stance.
While neither Mit45 nor OPMS responded to multiple requests for comment, Mit45 has also had a scandal involving paid protesters. According to a HART press release, the company hired dozens of protestors from Craigslist to protest 7-OH outside an industry trade show in Vegas this summer. Many of whom had no idea what they were even protesting.
After agreeing to meet with me to discuss this story, GKC executive director Matt Lowe cancelled the night before. JW Ross has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
Next Steps
As of the writing of this article, the DEA has received the FDA’s scheduling request. With the exception of the attempted scheduling of kratom in 2016, it is extremely rare for the DEA to decide not to follow an FDA/HHS scheduling request.
In the event of this scheduling, the sale or possession of 7-OH isolate products will become a criminal offense. The exact timeline for this process is not yet known. Some states, however, are already taking matters into their own hands. In August, just weeks after the FDA’s announcement, the Florida State Attorney General filed an emergency rule that added 7-OH to the state’s list of Schedule I substances.
According to federal regulators, the scheduling of 7-OH will not affect leaf kratom. But even if this is true, state regulators, many of whom take their cues from the federal government, may not feel the same way. In September, a spokesman for the California Department of Public Health declared that neither 7-OH nor leaf kratom are legal, writing in an email that “It is unlawful in California to sell kratom (including synthetic kratom, 7-OH) as a food, dietary supplement, or drug to those of any age…kratom/7-OH is illegal and dangerous.”
“This is a way for the federal government to keep its hands clean,” Dr. Michele Ross, the Chief Scientific Advisor for the 7-OH consumer advocacy group 7-HOPE, told me. “Even though they told everyone, ‘hey, we’re not coming for your kratom,’ they don’t have to come for your kratom. The states are coming for your kratom.”
Even if 7-OH is banned nationwide and states across the country implement full kratom bans, kratom-derived products may still become available for medical use soon. According to Dr. McCurdy, his lab is working with the National Institute on Drug Abuse to develop mitragynine into a pure pharmaceutical product, and they are likely to begin human clinical trials for opioid use disorder sometime in 2026.
This article is from an external, unpaid contributor. It does not represent High Times’ reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.
