The rise of gas station opioids
· Vox
They have fun names like Feel Free, Smurphs, and Hazy Tabz. They come in colorful packages and in gummy form. They’re widely available at gas stations, corner stores, and smoke shops across the country.
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They’re also highly addictive, largely unregulated, and in the news after they were found near the bodies of two dead University of Mississippi students.
The drugs are called Kratom and 7-OH. The first, kratom, is derived from the leaves of a coffee-like plant in Southeast Asia. When taken in small doses, kratom causes a low-key buzz. In higher doses, the high is described as euphoric. It operates like an opioid — a chemical in kratom called mitragynine binds to opioid receptors in the brain, which leads to that euphoric high. It also can lead to addiction and overdose.
Social media is full of videos of people trying to kick the drug, with harrowing stories of dependence and withdrawal.
7-OH is a highly concentrated compound derived from kratom, which dials up both the high and the danger. The drug has caught the attention of US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who warned in a press conference last year that 7-OH was “marketed for children.”
“They’re gummy bears, they’re bright colors, they’re candy-flavored,” Kennedy said. “This is really a sinister, sinister industry.” In August, federal agencies announced they were taking steps to effectively ban 7-OH nationwide.
To break down the increasing prevalence of both kratom and 7-OH, what the drugs do, and what to do about them, Today, Explained spoke with Mattha Busby, a freelance journalist who covers drugs and drug policy and who wrote about kratom earlier this year.
As Busby explains, kratom and 7-OH are “definitely in the zeitgeist. It’s in the news and for good reason. To have these 7-OH gummies just in gas stations is a really potentially problematic thing. Without the drug education alongside it, this drug has just popped up out of nowhere.”
Busby also talked with Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram about the business interests behind the drugs, why they’re a complicated topic for the Make America Healthy Again movement, and how industry lobbyists have teamed up with several Trump administration officials to try to sway the results of regulatory decisions.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Is there an important distinction between kratom and 7-OH? Is 7-OH found in kratom?
7-OH is found in relatively small quantities within kratom, but this businessman, Vince Saunders, who is the self-styled American shaman out of Kansas City, basically figured out how to extract the 7-OH and blow it up into entire pills.
I’ve never tried 7-OH and I’m not interested, just for the record, since I’ve been talking about how I don’t mind kratom, but these 7-OH tablets are uber, uber strong. I think the large number of people that are taking it are using it instead of opioids. And maybe it’s better, maybe it’s not.
Is 7-OH something you can also easily find at your neighborhood gas station?
Yeah. It’s much the same as the kratom formulations, so you’re talking gummies, little shots, capsules, and the brand names for the 7-OH companies are perhaps even more kind of out there — 7-OHeaven is one.
It’s certainly not heaven when you’re going into withdrawals.
And do we know that people are? Are people becoming addicted to 7-OH?
People are becoming addicted to kratom and 7-OH. I think the whole thing, the concern originally sprung up with the Feel Free tonics that are like a mix of kava and kratom. And people just got habituated into drinking several of them per day and realized that it’s very unpleasant if they don’t continue to do that on a daily basis.
We have a federal government that loves to police drugs of all sorts. What are they doing about 7-OH?
It’s this MAHA dilemma, right? Because their ethos is very “natural medicines and freedom.” The idea that this Feel Free tonic, whose owner JW Ross recently gave, or a company related to him recently gave, like $500,000 to the MAHA PAC, and he’s been photographed next to RFK Jr. — he’s perhaps predictably come out on the side of the kratom industry, which is lobbying for a ban of 7-OH.
RFK Jr. called it sinister and said that it targets children, which it appears to do in some cases with the gummies. There’s kratom gummies too and clearly gummies are an easier way, especially for older people, to ingest the medicine or substance, so we shouldn’t just blame the gummies here.
But clearly, when you’ve just got packets of these gummies that are called like 7-OHeaven just on the shelf or indeed behind the counter at the gas station, there’s going to be concern about that.
There are other MAGA figures like Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who’s got a million-dollar investment in the parent company of Feel Free. There’s definitely this nexus of figures in the government that have got some interest, potentially, or relationships with the kratom industry. And indeed the department when I was writing my Wired story reminded us and readers that everything he’s done is ethical and I’m sure it has been.
We usually think of liberal drug policies as a lefty thing. Markwayne Mullin’s about as right as they come. Are kratom and 7-OH making friends across the political spectrum because there’s a big business opportunity here?
You look at Trump’s executive order on psychedelics and then rescheduling cannabis, and it seems that the right has really seized the mantle and is looking at it from a more libertarian perspective of, “Hey, what happens in a man’s head is his own business.”
They’re also being probably more business friendly than people on the left would be, so it’s a really interesting moment, especially with RFK Jr. as health secretary.
Trump has spoken at length about the opioid crisis in the United States and how it’s tearing our communities apart and whatnot. Here we have readily accessible opioids at our gas stations.
Yes, they’re not killing nearly as many people as prescription drugs are. However, they’re a lot easier to get than prescription drugs. Help me understand this administration’s position in relation to what could be a real terror for some people.
They are in the process of banning 7-OH. Last month, the Department of Justice set out an emergency scheduling, so that’s open for comments at the moment. When they ban something, it doesn’t just happen overnight.
I think by the beginning of next year, it’s quite possible that these 7-OH products won’t be in gas stations and indeed some states have already taken action.
And just to get ahead of any confusion here, 7-OH may be banned from gas stations and probably other convenience stores, but not kratom?
Exactly.
Why one and not the other? Obviously 7-OH is stronger, but you could take a lot of kratom and it might feel like taking a little 7-OH, no?
Absolutely. You just need to take a lot and it’s in powder form. So you need to consume a prodigious quantity of it or drink a bunch of these seltzers.
I think that they’re not going to ban kratom because there’s an obvious recognition of the good it does for people that are recovering from opiate addictions and that they do have a kind of natural off-ramp, [which] is very unlikely to kill you even though you might take a huge amount. Whereas, if you’re taking like 26 different medications, including a bunch of opioids for your chronic pain, you might die.
Who do you think wins the argument at the end of the day? We have some strong lobbying forces involved here. You’ve got a lot of people who have come to enjoy or depend on these substances that are, as we’ve established many times now, readily available all over the country.
Do you think we see fewer or more kratom products in our gas stations and convenience stores in the years to come?
The kratom advocates are a lot more eloquent and suited and booted than the 7-OH folks. What I see is that 7-OH will be forced underground and that kratom will continue its long and illustrious ascent in American culture.
We do really have a gas station culture in this country, and I wonder if these substances being so available in them is a particularly American thing. You live in the UK. Are gas station drugs a US thing?
It’s an American thing for sure. But you guys take a lot of drugs!