On August 13, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced that 7-hydroxymitragynine would immediately become a Schedule I substance under an emergency rule. “Due to the danger posed to the public, Florida is taking 7-OH off the shelves immediately,” he announced.
On September 8, Florida’s Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson announced on X that the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) had been removing the products. “Our team has removed 17,311 packages of isolated and/or concentrated 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH) from retail locations in more than 20 Florida counties…These ‘wellness’ products are nothing more than vape shop morphine.”
However, the pictures he posted of products he referred to “vape shop morphine” included plain leaf kratom and two packages of full-spectrum kratom extracts.
Dr. Michelle Ross, a neuroscientist and advocate for legal access to both kratom and 7-OH, pointed out that some of the products appeared to be legal. “Are you just taking all kratom products from the shelves? Isn’t that illegal?”
The law in Florida states that kratom products are legal if they contain less than 400 parts per million (ppm), or 0.04% of 7-OH in dry weight.
The percentages of 7-OH for the pictured kratom products are listed in online shops as:
- Modus Kratom Thai Powder: <0.045%
- OPMS Gold Capsules: <0.1%
- Maha Kratom Extract Gold Capsules: 0.15%
If the above percentages constituted the dry weight amounts of 7-OH, they would all exceed 400 ppm, or 0.04%. However, percentages of alkaloids listed in kratom packaging are typically the percentage of total alkaloids, not dry weight. Total alkaloids only make up approximately 1% of the plain leaf kratom material, and approximately 5-15% of all the kratom extract material.
Therefore, to account for the total amount of dry weight represented by a single alkaloid, you have to do more math:
- Modus Kratom Thai Powder, estimated for 1% of total alkaloids: 0.045% x 0.01% = <0.00045% or 4.5 ppm of dry weight
- OPMS Gold Capsules, estimated for 15% of total alkaloids: 0.1% x 0.15% = <0.015% or 150 ppm of dry weight
- Maha Kratom Extract Gold Capsules, estimated for 15% of total alkaloids: 0.15% x 0.15% = 0.0225% or 225 ppm of dry weight
All of these amounts fall under the legal threshold for 7-OH in Florida.
We reached out to Commissioner Simpson’s office and received a reply from Aaron Keller, Communications Director of FDACS. He told us, “Based on the advertised amount of 7-OH in the packages, the products shown exceeded this limit.”
It’s unclear whether the packaging specified that the percentages were for total alkaloids. We replied with this question, but have not yet received a response (we will update this if we do).
So far, there are no publicly reported arrests tied to Florida’s 7-OH sweep. The enforcement has focused on seizures and stop-sale orders, not criminal charges—at least not yet.
Can you tell me the date this was published, and do you know if it’s still true no one has been arrested for 7oh. I sure hate all these analogues being introduced and threatening a market that was already too gray for my liking.
I’m not even a Floridian. I’m just a neuroscientist that advocates for harm reduction. I’ve seen so many lives ruined.