Kratom's murky US market raises alarm as unregulated 'gas station heroin' gains users

Jeffrey Deaver, a 58-year-old retired timber cutter in Washington state, spent years searching for relief from severe chronic pain in his hips and knees. When doctors couldn't help and surgeries remained months away, he discovered kratom—a Southeast Asian plant sold in pill and liquid form at convenience stores and gas stations across America. He started cautiously, then increased his doses until the pain subsided. "It was like a miracle," he said. "I could sleep. I could function. I just don't know what I'd do without it."

Deaver's story reflects a quiet surge in kratom use over the past decade. The herb, native to Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, entered the US market around 2016 as a supplement—a classification that exempted it from FDA oversight. What began as a traditional tea in Southeast Asia transformed into a highly concentrated product sold everywhere from petrol stations to vape shops, marketed as a natural remedy for pain, anxiety, and depression. At lower doses, users report a caffeine-like stimulation. At higher doses, the plant's compounds, particularly 7-Hydroxymitragynine, produce opioid-like effects by activating dopamine and other hormones. Some people have turned to kratom specifically to manage addiction to prescription opioids and fentanyl.

But the lack of federal regulation has created a market where no one can verify what's actually in the bottle. "You could go and create something in your basement, market it as a supplement, and nobody's really going to check and see what's in it," said Dr. Shane Speights, dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State University. This opacity carries real consequences. At higher doses, kratom can produce hallucinations and central nervous system depression—a condition that can lead to cardiovascular collapse and respiratory failure. Jana Wu, director of clinical integration at addiction treatment center Mountainside, has worked with patients taking up to 20 pills daily, their tolerance climbing so high that the doses required to achieve any effect became dangerous. "It affects marriages, relationships," Wu said. "I've seen people lose jobs, spend thousands of dollars a month on it."

The alarm intensified this week when investigators discovered packaged kratom in the possession of two deceased University of Mississippi students. While their deaths were not attributed to kratom, the discovery prompted official warnings and renewed scrutiny of a substance that has operated in legal limbo for years. In 2016, the Drug Enforcement Agency attempted to classify kratom as Schedule 1, the most restrictive category, citing it as "an imminent hazard to public safety." The effort collapsed within months after the Justice Department received numerous public comments opposing the move.

Today, kratom remains banned in 11 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Massachusetts became the most recent, issuing a temporary emergency order in August. Internationally, the UK has outlawed it entirely, and Malaysia—where the kratom tree grows—prohibits its consumption and sale under the Poisons Act of 1952. But across much of the US, it remains legal and unregulated. Arizona has sued at least one company selling kratom beverages. Anti-kratom advocates describe it as a "gas-station drug poisoning our communities." Meanwhile, pro-kratom groups like the American Kratom Association push for bans on synthetic versions "posing as natural kratom" rather than broader restrictions on the plant itself.

The tension reflects a deeper regulatory gap: kratom occupies a space where neither the FDA nor most state governments have moved decisively to control it, leaving individual consumers to navigate a market where the contents of any given product remain essentially unknowable. For people like Deaver, who credit kratom with restoring function and dignity to their lives, the prospect of a ban raises urgent questions about what alternative they would have. For public health officials watching hospitalizations and deaths accumulate, the current landscape—where a substance with opioid-like potency sits on convenience store shelves with minimal oversight—represents a failure waiting to be addressed.