Who gets to keep selling?

First, the names. 7OH means 7-hydroxymitragynine, an alkaloid found at low levels in kratom and sold in concentrated products. Some of the people in this fight want botanical kratom protected and concentrated 7OH removed. Others want restrictions on the plant and its principal alkaloids too.

That difference matters. You cannot lump everybody into one anti-kratom group and still explain which businesses their preferred rules would protect.

The timeline starts with trade groups fighting over labels in 2024. In 2025, FDA enforcement and scheduling recommendations arrive alongside demands for a broader ban. By 2026, we have emergency scheduling proceedings, paid lobbying, two congressional bills and Senator Chuck Grassley saying all kratom should leave store shelves. This has become a much bigger fight over who gets access to these products.

On June 2, 2025, atai and Beckley announced their combination. The inspected FDA warning letter to Thang Botanicals, operating as 7OHMZ, carries a June 25 date: a 23-day gap. Twenty-three days apart. A useful date to remember, alongside what each document actually says.

FDA publicized seven recent warning letters on July 15. July 15 is when FDA publicized them. It is not the date on the June letter. On July 29, FDA recommended scheduling action focused on concentrated 7OH products. A warning letter alleges regulatory violations and requests correction; a scheduling recommendation is another step with different legal consequences.

Two days later, on July 31, FDA announced major opioid-pain-medication labeling changes emphasizing long-term risks and warning against sudden discontinuation. Two days. These actions concern different products and rules, but the timing belongs on the page.

DEA’s two processes have different correspondence dates. For mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, MGM-15 and MGM-16, DEA contacted HHS December 15, 2025 and HHS responded January 20, 2026. For the separate threshold-based 7OH proceeding, the dates were February 24 and March 6, 2026. HHS advised no objection and addressed the absence of relevant investigational or approved drug applications for those substances.

The public announcement came July 1. The notices appeared July 6. An intent notice tells you DEA plans to act. The effective order is what changes the legal status.

The temporary Schedule I order for pseudoindoxyl, MGM-15 and MGM-16 took effect August 26, 2026. Those are separate compounds, not alternate names for 7OH. No final 7OH order was located as of the October 6 cutoff. Emergency scheduling changes commercial access and research conditions, so the effective order and the separate notice must retain their own dates.

Botanic Tonics, founded by Jerry W. Ross, sells Feel Free botanical products. In April 2023, FDA reported a seizure involving more than 250,000 Feel Free units and bulk ingredients, valued at approximately $3 million. The resulting federal proceeding sought forfeiture of seized property through a civil case.

Ross also shows up in the political money. FEC records show $6,600 in direct Team Kennedy receipts in September 2023. There is more Kennedy-related giving later, and then company money. We will get to it. The dates and the name on each check matter.

Back in October 2024, the American Kratom Association, AKA, described an agreement with the Holistic Alternative Recovery Trust, HART. The idea was to distinguish the products through labeling. Products sold as kratom would remain within natural 7OH levels; products above those levels would be identified as non-kratom. AKA’s October 11 statement describes differentiation rather than a blanket prohibition on every separately labeled 7OH product. What we have here is AKA’s own public description; the full signed agreement is still missing.

The Global Kratom Coalition, or GKC, publicly challenged AKA’s position around October 7 and 8. AKA responded that it had never endorsed isolates in products sold as kratom and disclosed the HART agreement. By July 1, 2026, AKA publicly supported DEA scheduling of concentrated 7OH. So hold onto the sequence: an agreement about differentiation, public pressure from GKC, and later AKA support for scheduling concentrated 7OH.

And who founded GKC? AKA’s chairman identified Ross as its founder in June 2024. Ross’s company sells in the botanical market the campaign wants to preserve. That puts a named business interest right in the middle of this policy dispute. SEC records list Jerry W. Ross as a Botanic Tonics director or manager; the company’s March 2025 release names Cameron Korehbandi as CEO.

Botanic Tonics is private. We cannot just pull up a stock ticker and read quarterly earnings. Its January 8, 2025 SEC Form D/A reports an exempt securities offering with $25 million sold to 30 investors, following a first sale on November 7, 2024. It declined to disclose revenue. That $25 million is financing. It is not sales revenue, and the amendment does not give us another $25 million to add to the first one.

On March 5, 2025, the company claimed annual sales above $250 million, profitability in its third year and more than 30,000 retail locations after its store count more than doubled during 2024. Those numbers come from the company. Its audited books are not in front of us.

I wanted to know whether concentrated 7OH had taken sales from Botanic Tonics. That would be useful data. The available numbers do not establish it. The company’s public statement describes growth.

To measure a loss, we need comparable retailer sales, distributor sales, company financials and product-level market shares. Until those turn up, there is no number to put on how much business 7OH supposedly took.

In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine acknowledged contact from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. September 5 reporting described a paused ban effort and a canceled pharmacy-board meeting, while the governor’s office continued to favor a ban covering botanical and synthetic products. The governor acknowledged the contact. A meeting was canceled and the push paused. Federal political influence reached into a state kratom dispute.

A published photograph also shows Kennedy and Ross together. It was attributed to HART and reproduced by the Kansas City Star. The photograph’s date and the purpose of the encounter were not established; the dated receipts and reported Ohio contact supply the chronological evidence.

On December 22, the government dismissed the Botanic Tonics product-forfeiture proceeding, according to the company’s release identifying docket document 38. Its January 2026 statement promoted the outcome as recognition of the distinction between botanical leaf products and synthetic products. The government ended the case. FDA approval is a separate process, and the dismissal did not decide that the product was safe.

Here is where the bookkeeping matters, because these records are easy to add up wrong. Ross’s direct non-memo receipts in the FEC records reviewed here total $182,607.34: $6,600 to Team Kennedy, $161,800 to Kennedy Victory Fund and $14,207.34 in other party receipts. Kennedy Victory Fund receipts occurred in January and February 2025.

On February 17, 2026, $443,000 in Republican National Committee contributions was attributed to Ross through Hydra623 Holdings LLC. Hydra623 is the holding company named as the payer; Ross’s records are partnership-attribution memo entries. That is how partnership attribution works: part of the partnership’s contribution is assigned to a partner. Counting the payment and the memo as two checks makes money appear twice.

Botanic Tonics LLC separately contributed $500,000 to MAHA PAC on March 4 and another $500,000 on April 9, 2026. MAHA stands for Make America Healthy Again. These are company receipts to a political committee, classified in the archive as noncontribution-account receipts, rather than payments to HHS.

An earlier total of $720,672.99 counted overlapping memo entries. That is not a sound total for unique personal cash. The correction belongs here with the figures. Joint-fund allocation memos totaling $95,065.65 are excluded from additive totals. The underlying RNC records identify the partnership payer.

Now put the dates next to the money: the 2025 Ohio call and December dismissal preceded Hydra623’s February 2026 RNC contributions and Botanic Tonics’ March and April MAHA receipts. Earlier Kennedy-related giving did occur before those events.

Markwayne Mullin’s financial disclosure lists a Botanic Tonics investment valued between $500,001 and $1 million. The form gives a value range. It does not tell us an exact purchase price. Mullin became Homeland Security secretary in March 2026. Senate Finance’s August inquiry identifies his advocacy concerning restrictions on synthetic competitors. No verified divestiture was located in this research pass. DEA sits within the Justice Department, not Homeland Security.

Then there is the campaign that wants to keep natural botanicals on the shelf. Stop Gas Station Heroin LLC explicitly defends natural botanicals while targeting concentrated synthetic products. Its launch statement names Matthew Lowe as executive director; Lowe also leads GKC. The LLC’s campaign concerns other products as well, but its kratom boundary preserves the category in which Botanic Tonics sells.

Official lobbying disclosures list Checkmate income from Stop Gas Station Heroin LLC totaling $750,000 across Q3 2025 through Q2 2026: $150,000, $300,000, $150,000 and $150,000. That is money reported by the lobbying firm, not checks paid to senators. And calling an operation a coalition does not change the LLC behind it into a charity.

The New York Times reported that Ross’s allies established the LLC and that its lobbyists sought tougher enforcement against synthetic competitors. The campaign’s own materials defend natural botanicals. That boundary preserves the kind of market Botanic Tonics sells in. We have the named lobbying client. Tracing the ultimate source of every dollar behind it requires more records.

Senator Bernie Moreno introduced S.5383 on August 8, 2026, with referral to Senate Judiciary. Representative Lance Gooden introduced H.R.10272 on September 3, with referral to House Energy and Commerce and Judiciary. Both introduced versions use the short title End Gas Station Heroin Act. The campaign company uses Stop Gas Station Heroin LLC.

The introduced texts preserve a conditional botanical market while restricting concentrated products. Section 2’s exemption uses limits of one milligram per gram for solids, one milligram per milliliter for liquids and one part 7OH per hundred parts mitragynine by mass. Manufacturing exclusions can remove the exemption even when a product meets a numerical limit.

Section 3 creates a broader commercial synthetic-opioid mechanism based on activity, potency, production and intended consumption, with exclusions for FDA-approved drugs and research. Its personal-use protection does not override Section 2 scheduling. The long title mentions MGM-15 and MGM-16, but the operative text does not separately name them.

Put those bills next to the campaign. Similar branding. A similar boundary between qualifying botanical products and manufactured concentrates. Paid federal lobbying on kratom. Those are records you can read. The missing piece is correspondence showing who drafted what. Q3 lobbying reports, due October 20, may add bill-specific information.

Gooden’s September 24 publicity cited the deaths of two University of Mississippi students. His bill had already been introduced September 3, before the deaths discussed in the release. The deaths appeared in publicity for a bill that already existed. Keep that order straight. Final toxicology and investigative findings matter when discussing cause; nothing presented here establishes botanical kratom alone as the cause.

Chuck Grassley, the U.S. senator from Iowa and chairman of Senate Judiciary, called for all kratom to leave store shelves in his October 2 statement while demanding a final rule focused on 7OH. His committee received S.5383. His demand reaches beyond concentrated 7OH. It reaches the botanical products the bills conditionally protect too. He is a different person from Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley.

No Grassley recipient appears in the Ross contribution records reviewed here. No direct kratom coordination between Grassley and Mac Haddow, AKA’s senior fellow on public policy, was located. That is what the inspected records show. It is not a lifetime audit of every donor.

Indivior, which markets Suboxone, appears on the 2023 conference exhibitor list of the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers (NAATP). NAATP also operates a federal political action committee and advocated for the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA), legislation Grassley helped advance through Senate Judiciary in 2016. The conference relationship and shared policy involvement are documented. An Indivior payment to Grassley has not been established. The records we checked also do not establish NAATP’s involvement in the current kratom opposition campaign.

Then there are the people trying to manage pain. They belong in this discussion too. CDC’s opioid-prescribing guidance rejects abrupt discontinuation and patient abandonment. Journavx, approved in January 2025, adds a non-opioid option for moderate to severe acute pain. That approval does not establish a replacement for chronic-pain care. FDA’s July opioid-label changes emphasize risks and also warn against sudden discontinuation. If access changes, patients still need care. A ban does not answer where they will get it.

The medical interest in kratom chemistry did not start when the latest campaign showed up. In July 2020, atai acquired a majority interest in Kures, which developed the kratom-related investigational drug KUR101. Phase 1 results were announced in 2022. Keep that date in mind. Companies were developing medicines from this chemistry years before the bills we are looking at now.

Meanwhile, Kures wound down during 2024. SEC disclosures describe termination of its Columbia University license and reassignment of licensed-term intellectual property to Columbia. atai retained certain assets and trial data. Remember where those rights went when we get to Lilly.

In November 2024, Sparian Biosciences announced a $19.5 million, five-year NIH grant supporting development of SBS-226 for opioid-use disorder and withdrawal. The candidate is related to kratom chemistry but is not chemically identical to mitragynine pseudoindoxyl. The money funds development. It does not mean all the proposed clinical work has already happened.

NIH announced on June 1, 2026 that an investigational new drug application enabled mitragynine research. An investigational new drug application, or IND, opens the door to clinical research. It does not put an approved medicine on the pharmacy shelf. The NIH, NIDA and NCATS program represents public research rather than an identified private pharmaceutical licensee.

Lilly’s atai acquisition was announced July 16, 2026, with depression programs BPL-003 and VLS-01 as its stated focus. SEC merger history describes a May 13 meeting and June 1 initial offer. The negotiations preceded DEA’s July announcement. The announcement followed DEA’s July 1 announcement by 15 days; Lilly completed the acquisition in September.

The earlier Kures license termination matters here. A transfer to Lilly of exclusive Columbia kratom patent rights was not established. The licensed rights went back to Columbia. Retained trial data is another asset. We need to follow each one rather than bundle them into a claim about what Lilly bought.

While the retail fight goes on, the patent records show people claiming formulations, modified chemistry, production methods and delivery systems. Here are the owners and the stage each record has reached:

Publication follows earlier filing and priority dates. A divisional splits claims from an earlier patent family. Applications should remain distinct from granted patents. Neither establishes clinical effectiveness, FDA approval, current commercial manufacturing or campaign funding. Definitive current ownership, maintenance and exclusive licensing require register and license checks. Shaman Pharma has not been established as the same company as CBD American Shaman. Cessation of a PCT application does not resolve all national rights or licensees.

Smart Approaches to Marijuana, or SAM, requested Schedule I treatment for all kratom on August 5, 2025. Its linked organization, the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions, or FDPS, runs a Ban Kratom Now petition. Kevin Sabet leads both organizations, and FDPS identifies shared staff with SAM. SAM dates to 2013 and FDPS to 2022. The organizations were already there. Now that network is campaigning against kratom.

The American Medical Association announced model legislation for the 2026 state sessions on November 21, 2025. Its framework generally prohibits producing or selling human-use kratom and tianeptine products without FDA approval. Other examples cover scheduling, age restrictions, ingredient limits and labeling. Tianeptine is a separate drug, not a kratom alkaloid. A model bill gives advocates something to take to state lawmakers. That helps explain how similar proposals can spread. It still has to become law in each jurisdiction.

SAM and FDPS identify Patrick J. Kennedy as a co-founder. Braeburn lists him on its board. Braeburn markets Brixadi, a long-acting injectable buprenorphine treatment for opioid-use disorder. Patrick Kennedy, the former congressman, is different from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

That pharmaceutical board connection is public. Separately, SAM explicitly denies pharmaceutical and alcohol funding in its published FAQ. A pharmaceutical board seat is a real connection. To show that Braeburn funds the campaign, we would need a payment record. No verified alcohol funding turned up either.

Kratom Danger Awareness advocates controlled-substance scheduling. Founder Wendy Chamberlain describes her son’s death in legislative testimony. Family accounts are attributed to the families; single-substance causation requires underlying medical evidence.

End Kratom Addiction lists Scottsdale Recovery Center owner Michelle Siwek among its advisers. August 2026 reporting identifies Bob Good LLC as its lobbyist. The treatment-business connection is there. So is reporting about a lobbyist. The advisers list does not tell us who paid the bills. The registration could not be confirmed directly in the lobbying register for this article, so it remains attributed to reporting.

We have a botanical business, political giving, a cabinet investment, paid lobbying against a competing category and congressional bills preserving a conditional botanical market. Alongside that, we have groups seeking a broader ban, with medical, treatment-business and pharmaceutical-board connections.

That is plenty to examine without inventing the parts that are missing.

Look at who paid. Look at who met. Look at the investment disclosure. Then read which products the bill removes and which it exempts. The links are here so you can check those pieces yourself.

The next records to pursue are October 20 lobbying disclosures, comparable product sales, the full AKA-HART agreement, agency and cabinet communications, patent licenses and divestiture documents. That is where the next part of the investigation goes. If an organization wants government to take away a product adults are using, I want to know who runs it, who pays for it and who gets to keep selling when it gets its way.