![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776457568_901_.jpeg\")
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Officers gather illegally grown kratom plants in 2019 in Phang Nha province, Thailand. The country decriminalized the possession and sale of kratom in 2021.<\/p>\n
(Associated Press)<\/p>\n
Kratom is derived from the leaves of Mitragyna speciosa, a tree native to Southeast Asia. It has a long history of being used for chronic pain<\/a> or to boost energy and in the U.S., research points to Americans also using it to alleviate anxiety. In low doses, kratom appears to act as a stimulant but in high doses, it can have effects more like opioids.<\/p>\n But in the last few years, a synthetic form of kratom refined for its psychoactive compound, 7-hydroxymitragynine or 7-OH, has entered the market that is highly concentrated and not clearly labeled<\/a>, leading to confusion and problems for consumers. The synthetic form gaining momentum in the market is sparking concern among public health officials because of its ability to bind to opioid receptors in the body, causing it to have a higher potential for abuse. <\/p>\n Los Angeles County leaders, meanwhile, have grappled with differentiating the two and regulating<\/a> the products that come in the form of powder, capsules and drinks and have been linked to six county deaths<\/a>. Sales of kratom and 7-OH products were banned in the county<\/a> in November.<\/p>\n In reviewing the data, which did not differentiate whether callers had consumed natural or synthetic kratom, researchers set out to understand the effect of what they believe is a \u201crapidly evolving kratom market,\u201d and highlight the role poison centers can play as an early warning surveillance system to detect new trends.<\/p>\n National Poison Data System findings<\/p>\n The data showed that over the last 10 years, 62% of the kratom-related calls to poison control centers were from people who said they consumed the drug by itself, and the other 38% were from people who combined it with another substance or substances.<\/p>\n Those who consumed kratom with another substance combined it most frequently with one or a combination of the following: alcohol, opioids, benzodiazepines (like Xanax or Valium), cannabis and cannabinoids, stimulants and antidepressants. <\/p>\n The data also broke down hospitalizations related to kratom \u2014 adults who took it alone or in combination and experienced \u201cadverse\u201d health effects; and adults who took it alone or in combination and experienced more serious \u201cmoderate\u201d or \u201cmajor\u201d health effects, including death.<\/p>\n Kratom powder products are displayed in a smoke shop in Los Angeles in 2024.<\/p>\n (Michael Blackshire\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Hospitalizations for adults who had consumed kratom alone and experienced adverse effects increased from 43 in 2015 to 538 in 2025. For those who took it in combination and were hospitalized with an adverse health effect, the total jumped from 40 in 2015 to 549 last year.<\/p>\n The numbers were even higher for hospitalizations where the health effects were more serious or fatal.<\/p>\n In 2015, there were 76 reports of people being hospitalized after taking kratom alone and experiencing a serious health effect or dying. By last year, that number had climbed to 919. The reports of serious health effects, including death, for those who took kratom in combination with another substance grew from 51 in 2015 to 725 last year.<\/p>\n The research does not break down kratom-related deaths by year but states that there were 233 deaths over the 10-year study period, or just over 3% of all 7,287 serious medical outcomes. Of the total number of kratom-related deaths, 184 cases involved the consumption of multiple substances.<\/p>\n What California\u2019s poison control system found in its state data<\/p>\n The California Poison Control System is currently reviewing its data concerning kratom-related calls but an initial analysis shows parallels to the national report, said Rais Vohra, medical director of the state poison control system. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have about 10% of the national population and about 10% of the national call volume with poison control,\u201d Vohra said. \u201cAnd so, not surprisingly, we were able to identify over 900 cases of calls related to kratom in that same period.\u201d<\/p>\n Local researchers are still deciphering the state data but they too have found that kratom-related calls are climbing.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s accelerating, which I think is one of the main points of the [published] report,\u201d Vohra said. <\/p>\n A majority of calls received by poison control come from healthcare facilities where \u201cpresumably someone has a problem … severe enough to warrant calling 911 or going to the emergency room, and that\u2019s when our agency gets involved,\u201d Vohra said.<\/p>\n Kait Brown, clinical managing director for America\u2019s Poison Control Centers, said the fact that kratom and 7-OH are federally unregulated products sold online, in gas stations and smoke shops gives people across the country easy access.<\/p>\n And while kratom enthusiasts maintain that it has been used in its natural form for hundreds of years, \u201cthere are new formulations that are a little bit different than how people have used it, at least historically,\u201d said William Eggleston, a pharmacist and the assistant clinical director of the Upstate New York Poison Center in Syracuse. <\/p>\n People are no longer consuming kratom only as a powder or capsule but also in the form of an energy shot or extract; it\u2019s similar for synthetic, more concentrated 7-OH products. <\/p>\n When regional poison centers compare their findings and experiences with the analysis of calls in the National Poison Data System, Eggleston said, \u201cundeniably there is an increase in calls related to kratom.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cBut when you put it in the bigger perspective of all the calls … this is still a very small percentage of what we\u2019re dealing with on a day to day basis,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the last decade, poison control centers around the country have received tens of thousands of calls from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28838,7,9,8,41756,3291,339,28837,118396,51322,7036,118398,592,118397,62732,3729,22178,93442],"class_list":{"0":"post-273105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-7-oh","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-california-headlines","11":"tag-california-news","12":"tag-combination","13":"tag-datum","14":"tag-death","15":"tag-kratom","16":"tag-kratom-related-call","17":"tag-last-decade","18":"tag-last-year","19":"tag-life-threatening-health-effect","20":"tag-people","21":"tag-poison-control-center","22":"tag-rais-vohra","23":"tag-report","24":"tag-researcher","25":"tag-substance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Kratom](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776457568_294_.jpeg\")
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