Pinal County Wants 7-OH Treated Like Fentanyl. Arizona Should Build the Detox Beds First.

Drew Barrett started drinking kratom shots because he was trying to get away from other substances. By the time Fortune found him, the 46-year-old in Champaign, Illinois, was drinking 10 to 12 two-ounce bottles a day at roughly $2,000 a month, had lost 35 pounds, and had checked himself into inpatient treatment. “The stuff is poison,” he said. Arizona is about to argue over that exact moment: the far side of a gas-station product nobody warned you about.

On Thursday, Pinal County Attorney Brad Miller told 12News that 7-OH, the concentrated kratom compound sold in smoke shops, is “a synthetic opioid equivalent to fentanyl that acts on the same receptors” and that he wants it added to Arizona’s legal definition of a narcotic drug next session, so sellers can be charged like any other dealer. He cited 146 kratom-involved deaths statewide from 2020 to 2023, likely an undercount, he said. Attorney General Kris Mayes is already suing Botanic Tonics, maker of the “feel free” kratom shot, for marketing it as an energy drink, including to people seeking sobriety, without clearly disclosing addiction and withdrawal risk.

A felony on the shelf without a detox bed behind it moves the withdrawal from the smoke shop to the jail cell.

Miller is right that the current line is weak. Arizona’s kratom law caps 7-OH at 2% of a product’s alkaloids and bans synthetic versions, and products that blow past it are sitting on counters anyway. But an overnight narcotic classification lands first on the people already physically dependent, whose supply vanishes the day the law takes effect. We made this argument when the federal 7-OH crackdown began: enforcement that arrives before treatment capacity creates a withdrawal wave with nowhere to go.

There is a treatment that works. A 2021 case series and literature review in the Journal of Addiction Medicine found buprenorphine, the same medication used for opioid use disorder, managed kratom withdrawal and dependence, though the evidence is small case series, not trials. For providers this week: add “kratom, 7-OH, or ‘feel free’?” as its own intake question, because people do not volunteer what they bought at a gas station, and confirm your prescribers will start buprenorphine for it. If you are dependent right now, you do not need a new law to ask for help; withdrawal from 7-OH is treatable, and it is an opioid problem, so ask for opioid treatment by name.

Arizona should regulate this. It should also write the detox line item into the same bill, before the shelves empty. You can follow our Arizona coverage and our kratom reporting. Drew Barrett got a bed. The person in Casa Grande who runs out the week the law changes deserves one too.