What is kratom? 4 things you should know about the substance

Kratom industry advocates and scientists are warning authorities and consumers against products that, although marketed as natural kratom, were likely chemically altered in a lab to increase potency.
They say the relatively new products, which contain high levels of 7-Hydroxymitragynine, or 7-OH, can be dangerous and should not be treated the same as kratom products.
Earlier this year, an industry advocacy group reported to the Texas Attorney General’s Office that it had found multiple businesses in North Texas selling products with illegal levels of 7-OH. Meanwhile, retailers who spoke with The Dallas Morning News said they struggle to keep up with fast-changing regulations.
Here are four things you should know about kratom and 7-OH-based products.
Get the latest breaking news from North Texas and beyond.
Or with:
By signing up you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
The Drug Enforcement Administration considers kratom a “chemical of concern.”
It is a plant that is native to southeast Asia and has reportedly been used to self-treat medical conditions, including anxiety, pain and opioid withdrawal, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
The FDA describes kratom as “a new dietary ingredient for which there is inadequate information to provide reasonable assurance that such ingredient does not present a significant or unreasonable risk of illness or injury.”
Kratom use carries the “risk of serious adverse events, including liver toxicity, seizures, and substance use disorder,” warns the FDA.
In cases involving kratom use and death, ”kratom was usually used in combination with other drugs, and the contribution of kratom in the deaths is unclear,” according to the FDA.
The pharmacological properties of the kratom plant are associated with two chemical compounds — mitragynine and 7-Hydroxymitragynine.
Mitragynine is the most abundant substance in kratom and widely believed to be the central chemical compound responsible for the plant’s effects.
Both mitragynine and 7-OH act similarly to opioids like codeine and morphine in that they activate biochemical pathways that elicit pain relief and can also affect mood. Some studies found that 7-OH is stronger than mitragynine.
Researchers say there is evidence that 7-OH is created when mitragynine is decomposing or ingested, but little is known about the chemical. They warned that products with unnatural levels of the chemical compound were likely created synthetically in a lab setting.
In June, three researchers from the University of Florida and a fourth from Johns Hopkins University published a joint statement arguing products with high concentrations of 7-OH should not be “scientifically considered or commercially categorized as kratom or as a kratom product.”
Regulations on kratom, including those related to 7-OH levels, vary by state. Kratom products are illegal in Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.
The Texas Kratom Consumer Protection Act, which went into effect just over a year ago, limits the legal limit of 7-OH in products to no more than 2% of the total alkaloid content.
Texas law also prohibits the sale of “synthetic alkaloids, including synthetic 7-Hydroxymitragynine and synthetically derived compounds from a kratom plant.”
Based on his research, Christopher McCurdy, a medical chemistry professor at the University of Florida, said getting mitragynine to convert into 7-OH without any outside chemical catalyst is not “commercially or economically feasible for someone to sell as a product.”
“From a scientist’s standpoint, we definitely say that these 7-OH products or products that are highly concentrated are no longer kratom products, even though they’re being labeled as such because they are no longer natural,” he said. “They’ve been somewhat synthetically manipulated.”
Kirsten Smith, who started the Kratom Research Unit at Maryland Opioid Research at Johns Hopkins University, said there is still much to learn about mitragynine and its potential uses.
She was one of the researchers who penned the June letter.
“Kratom, especially the closer you get to more botanical forward products, the botanical itself, the pharmacology is like bizarre and crazy and super interesting and has a lot going on,” she said. “And the major alkaloid mitragynine is very promiscuous, and it’s acting on many different systems in the body, and it’s really not super potent.”
That’s not the case for 7-OH, however.
She said she is “willing to buy” that there is potential for 7OH to be a form of harm reduction in severe cases of addiction, such as people who are intravenously injecting fentanyl.
“But for your average person who walks into a gas station or a head shop and they buy these products, and they do not understand what they’re taking or even among people who do understand what they’re taking but really have no history with these, I do think that the harm reduction narrative evaporates,” she said.