Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky announced that he is taking action to place 7-hydroxymitragynine on the list of Schedule I substances in Kentucky. The move will classify 7-OH in the same category as heroin, criminalizing 7-OH consumers in the bluegrass state.
If it is determined that a substance poses an imminent threat to public safety, Kentucky law allows the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to issue an emergency administrative regulation to control it immediately. Under KRS 13A.190, the Cabinet Secretary can file an emergency regulation that takes effect as soon as it is submitted, without waiting for public comment or legislative approval. This allows the state to act quickly when a new or dangerous substance emerges. The emergency regulation can remain in effect for up to 180 days, during which time the Cabinet must file a corresponding ordinary regulation to make the change permanent through the normal public notice and comment process. This emergency authority has been used in Kentucky to respond rapidly to what they or various lobbyists perceive as drug threats such as synthetic cannabinoids and new opioid analogs.
In a press release, Gov. Beshear linked 7-OH to the opioid crisis.
“We have marked three straight years of declines in overdose deaths in Kentucky, and that is progress we’re committed to building on as we work to protect more lives in the fight against addiction,” said Gov. Beshear. “Deadly and addictive drugs like 7-OH have no place in our communities, and this step will help us get these drugs off the streets and provide us more tools to keep Kentuckians safe.”
It’s unclear whether 7-OH on its own is deadly. Several deaths in California were described as 7-OH overdoses by authorities ahead of a California Department of Public Health declaration that both kratom and 7-OH are illegal in the state, despite lack of prohibition laws banning kratom or any derivatives. However, upon closer inspection, 7-OH was only named as a secondary cause of death, or part of a multi-drug death, in medical examiner reports.
Gov. Beshear is not targeting plain leaf kratom at this time, and even distinguished 7-OH from kratom in his press release: “While 7-OH is a chemical compound that occurs naturally in the kratom plant, this occurs only in very small amounts.”
Once again, journalists are failing to even do a quick Google search and are conflating 7-OH, a metabolite of mitragynine, with kratom, a plant that contains over 50 alkaloids, including mitragynine. A newspaper out of Falmouth KY, Falmouth Outlook, ran a story with the headline, “Governor Moves to Outlaw Kratom”. A WATE report out of Lexington called 7-OH a “form of kratom” and also repeatedly referred to 7-OH as “707”.
The American Kratom Association (AKA), the leading lobbyist/nonprofit organization in favor of keeping kratom legal, supports prohibition when it comes to 7-OH. In a recent YouTube video, Mac Haddow of the AKA insisted 7-OH was not a kratom alkaloid but a metabolite, and called out Jeff Smith from The Holistic Alternative Recovery Trust (HART), who recently spoke at the Kentucky Administrative Rules Committee. Smith, Haddow said, insisted 7-OH was a natural alkaloid occurring in the plant leaf, while 7-OH occurs as a metabolite during the drying process post-harvest. Mitragynine also metabolizes into 7-OH in the human body.
In a recent press release, HART insisted “7-OH is not lab-made or fully synthetic, it is naturally-derived from kratom, the same plant that all other kratom products come from, and undergoes a simple, one-step oxidation process” and that “there is no documented case of someone dying from 7-OH alone. If there were, it would be the first thing critics would point to, and they haven’t”.