More on the state’s initiative to get these potentially deadly products off store shelves and why the State Attorney General is comparing them to narcotics.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier paid a visit to Jacksonville Thursday to speak about a proposed ban on a product he’s comparing to narcotics: kratom.
Sheriff T.K. Waters says more than 340 grams of kratom were confiscated by a single JSO detective earlier in September. He added that Uthmeier’s push to ban kratom products comes at a crucial time to protect the city from what he called “gas station morphine.”
Kratom is a supplement often advertised as a remedy for opioid withdrawal, pain relief, and energy boosting.
Following an advisory from the FDA, Uthmeier moved to ban these products—commonly sold at gas stations and vape shops—and is also mandating that labels clearly indicate if kratom is an ingredient.
“When the 7-OH chemical concentrate in kratom is extracted and enhanced, the product can be up to 13 times more deadly than morphine,” Uthmeier mentioned.
In Jacksonville, two stores located near schools were caught selling kratom products containing high levels of 7-OH concentrate. Inspectors are continuing to search for and remove these products from shelves across the city.
“Those would come off immediately at that point and be classified as controlled substances, so they would have to be disposed of properly,” said Dr. Matthew Curran, Director of Food Safety at the Florida Department of Agriculture. “They can’t be sent back to the manufacturer. They can’t be thrown in the trash. These are actual narcotics or drugs, so they have to be disposed of in a proper manner just like any other drug.”
So far, nearly 18,000 packages containing kratom have been removed from stores across Florida, according to Uthmeier.