Gov. DeWine orders Ohio pharmacy board to ban synthetic kratom immediately

Gov. Mike DeWine renewed his executive request Thursday to categorize kratom as an illegal drug.

DeWine said he wants the Ohio Board of Pharmacy to use an emergency rule to ban synthetically modified kratom immediately, like 7-OH, and to look at banning natural kratom down the line.

The herbal extract from Asia has naturally occurring trace amounts of the alkaloids mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine, which in high doses have sedative effects.

“Kratom is just dangerous, and so we need to regulate it or we need to ban it,” he said in an interview with the Statehouse News Bureau.

DeWine’s first order to do so came in late August, but he then walked that back after a call with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has voiced his own concerns with synthetic k