Pinal County's top prosecutor is pushing state lawmakers to treat a concentrated kratom compound as a narcotic after his investigators went undercover into smoke shops and gas stations and found it sold openly over the counter.
County Attorney Brad Miller's office wants to support a bill putting 7-OH in the state's narcotic drug category, a change that would hand police more power over its sale, FOX 10 Phoenix reported Thursday night.
What investigators found
The products at issue contain 7-OH, a compound found in trace amounts in the kratom plant. Many items sold under the kratom name are concentrated or chemically altered versions, according to the reports.
Miller told FOX 10 he was alarmed by how shops pitched them. Shop owners know the products "are being marketed as percs, M-80's, blues," he said in that interview. In hidden-camera footage from the county's operation, one clerk compared a product to Percocet, ABC15 reported.
Hank Mueller, the county attorney's chief investigator, told ABC15 that store workers spoke openly about the effects and about which drugs the products imitate. He also said autopsies do not normally include a test for the compound, so its role in an overdose death could go unnoticed.
Dr. Frank LoVecchio, an Arizona State University professor and Valleywise Health physician, told FOX 10 that the compounds work on the same brain receptors as opioids, which makes dependence and withdrawal more likely.
