The Federal Government Is Deciding Kratom’s Fate Today. 32,000 People Already Told It What They Think.

Today is the deadline. After today, the federal government stops listening and starts deciding.

The public comment period on the DEA’s proposal to temporarily schedule concentrated 7-hydroxymitragynine — 7-OH, the potent, lab-concentrated compound increasingly sold in gas-station shots and vapes, distinct from the leaf-form kratom people have used for pain and opioid withdrawal for years — closes September 10. More than 32,000 comments had already been filed when the 15-day extension was granted in August, a fraction of the customary 60-day window advocates had asked for. The scope is narrow on paper — a specific potency threshold, 0.050% dry weight — but the practical effect won’t be narrow at all: cross that line into Schedule I, and every product above it becomes federally illegal overnight, with the same legal weight as heroin.

If you use kratom to manage pain, taper off opioids, or just get through a workday, you already know the difference between leaf and 7-OH matters more than any of this rulemaking language lets on. Leaf kratom is what most of the estimated 1 to 20 million American users take — tea, capsules, powder. 7-OH is a different animal: concentrated, fast-acting, and — according to the addiction-medicine doctors now fighting it in state legislatures — carrying real dependence and withdrawal risk of its own.

Pennsylvania is the clearest place to watch that fight play out in real time. Dr. Sarah Kawasaki, an addiction medicine specialist at Penn State who runs an opioid treatment program, told WITF she’s currently treating 10 to 20 patients for kratom use — roughly 80% of whom came to her having already sought treatment for opioid use disorder first. That’s not a coincidence; it’s the pattern researchers keep finding. A University of Michigan survey found more than half of kratom users report a history of substance use disorder. Preliminary 2026 data shows 17 kratom-related overdose deaths in Pennsylvania so far, down from 33 in 2025 — but 7-OH turns up in a growing share of poison-control cases: 41 so far this year, up from 25 in all of 2025. State lawmakers are split between a natural-leaf bill with age restrictions and a synthetic/high-potency ban, while the American Kratom Association’s Mac Haddow — a 10-year kratom user himself — has vowed to fight any bill that reaches for a total ban.

North Dakota already fought this exact fight and landed somewhere in the middle: after the House rejected a full ban 86–6, Gov. Kelly Armstrong signed a compromise law on September 4 — synthetic kratom banned, natural leaf restricted to adults 21 and over with labeling requirements. It’s the shape nearly every state ends up reaching for once the argument actually gets an airing: not whether kratom stays legal, but which version of it does.

Whatever the DEA decides after today’s deadline closes, it decides for the entire country at once — leaf and concentrate treated the same, whether or not the science says they should be.