The Next Drug Epidemic is Legal: The Nation's Kratom Problem Is More Complicated—and More Harmful—Than it Seems

Author

• Elizabeth Walsh, Cuny Graduate School of JournalismFollow

Graduation Date

Winter 12-19-2025

Grading Professor

Alicia Chang

Subject Concentration

Health & Science

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Abstract

This two-part health and science investigative piece reports how kratom and its offshoots have quietly fueled a lucrative and legal addiction epidemic for the last decade. While kratom’s derivative alkaloid 7-hyrdoxymitragynine made headlines this year and as the DEA is poised to ban the strong derivative, “natural” kratom and other kratom-derived products will remain. This piece tracks the history of the 'gas‑station opioid' crisis in the U.S. over ten years: what was thought to be an innocuous southeast Asian supplement has become multi-billion dollar industry built on gray‑area laws, marketed falsehoods, and regulatory loophooles.

Part 1: The ‘Gas Station Opioid’ Crisis follows James, an energy salesman whose “miracle” powder turns into a 100‑gram‑a‑day habit, a terrifying ER visit, and what he calls the worst withdrawal of his life, while an estimated tens of millions of Americans buy kratom in gas stations and smoke shops under an unregulated health halo. The reporting explains how more than 40 alkaloids can act like an opioid, stimulant, SSRI, and benzodiazepine at once, fueling dependence, organ damage, seizures, and a growing need for medications like Suboxone, as the market shifts from traditional leaf to high‑potency extracts and 7‑OH products many times stronger,and more addictive, than traditional forms.

Part 2: Keeping Kratom Legal: The Shell Companies and the Advocacy Machine zooms out to the industry forces that turned a niche green powder into a quarter‑billion‑dollar market, centering the little blue bottle FeelFree, a kratom‑and‑kava “life‑lifter” that leapt from smoke shops to 7‑Eleven while lawsuits, TikTok warnings, and whistleblowers accused it of destroying lives. Economists and poison‑center directors describe FeelFree as the inflection point where cautious, research‑driven opioid substitutes gave way to unsuspecting consumers grabbing a wellness shot at the counter and getting hooked, even as poison‑control data show kratom exposures surging and 7‑OH cases more than doubling in a year.

Part 2 traces how the American Kratom Association and Global Kratom Coalition, armed with a multimillion‑dollar war chest, helped kill the DEA’s 2016 ban attempt, drafted dozens of nearly identical state “Kratom Consumer Protection Acts,” and built a patchwork that keeps kratom widely available with minimal safety testing or potency labeling, while their leaders overlap with manufacturers and shell companies and now publicly champion a narrow 7‑OH ban. Clinicians, toxicologists, and former users describe a system where many doctors don’t recognize kratom at all, federal data are riddled with gaps, and people can walk into a gas station, buy a legal “all‑natural” product, and end up in opioid‑style withdrawal or the ICU. The story closes on a warning: as long as regulators lean on a small number of well‑funded voices who stand to profit from whatever rules emerge, ordinary citizens will be left unprotected while kratom’s poorly studied compounds are refined into ever more addictive, lucrative substances.

Recommended Citation

Walsh, Elizabeth, "The Next Drug Epidemic is Legal: The Nation's Kratom Problem Is More Complicated—and More Harmful—Than it Seems" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gj_etds/823