Gas Station Opioids: Kratom, 7-OH, and San Joaquin County's Missing Data

Health
Written By Don Bradford
Gas Station Opioids: Kratom, 7-OH, and San Joaquin County's Missing Data

Gas Station Opioids: Kratom, 7-OH, and San Joaquin County's Missing Data

LodiEye — July 2026

Overview

Products containing kratom and its lab-made derivative 7-OH have been illegal to sell for human consumption in California since October 24, 2025. On July 1, 2026, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration moved to place 7-OH and three related substances temporarily into Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act — the same schedule as heroin.

These products have been sold openly in Lodi. San Joaquin County has passed no ordinance, issued no retailer notice, published no consumer advisory, and released no data on kratom-related deaths, emergency visits, or store seizures.

This report does not claim San Joaquin County has a kratom crisis. It shows the county has built no way to find out. Counties that tested for the compound found it in their morgues. Ventura County linked 46 overdose deaths to kratom's main alkaloid since 2018. Los Angeles County confirmed six 7-OH deaths in adults aged 18 to 40 between April 2025 and January 2026. Yolo County counted seven since 2017. Mitragynine does not appear on a standard toxicology screen. A medical examiner has to order the test.

Part 1: Read This First

The five things that matter most

  • It is an opioid. Kratom's alkaloids bind the same brain receptors as morphine and fentanyl. Naloxone reverses a kratom overdose, which confirms the mechanism.
  • Naloxone works. Use it. Slowed breathing, unresponsiveness, pinpoint pupils, or blue lips after using a shot, tablet, or gummy from a smoke shop should be treated as an opioid overdose. Give Narcan, call 911, stay with the person. A second dose may be needed.
  • Never combine it with alcohol. Los Angeles County found alcohol present in every one of its recent kratom-linked deaths.
  • Selling it is illegal in California. Using it is not a crime. No one will be arrested for calling 911 or for asking for help.
  • It will not get you off opioids. It is marketed that way. It replaces one opioid dependence with another.

Numbers to keep

  • Emergency: 911
  • San Joaquin County Behavioral Health, substance use access line, 24 hours: 209-468-9370 or 1-888-468-9370
  • SAMHSA National Helpline, free and confidential, 24 hours: 1-800-662-4357
  • Poison Control: 1-800-222-1222
  • Report a store selling kratom or 7-OH, California Department of Public Health: (800) 495-3232

Part 2: What Kratom Actually Is

Kratom is the leaf of Mitragyna speciosa, a tree in the coffee family native to Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Laborers there have chewed the leaf or brewed it as tea for generations. Almost nothing sold in an American gas station resembles that.

The leaf produces 40 to 50 related alkaloids. Two drive the effects. Mitragynine is the main one, making up roughly 1 percent of powdered leaf. 7-hydroxymitragynine, written as 7-OH, exists in the raw plant at under 0.1 percent. At low doses the plant acts as a stimulant. At higher doses it sedates, produces euphoria, and slows breathing.

The derivative problem

Manufacturers buy purified mitragynine by the kilogram and add a hydroxyl group at the seven position in a lab reactor. The result is 7-OH at concentrations the plant never produces. Estimates put it at 5 to 50 times the potency of mitragynine and roughly 13 times the potency of morphine. Because it dissolves in water more readily, it also hits faster.

A third compound gets almost no public attention and deserves more. Mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, or MP, sits one step past 7-OH and forms inside human plasma automatically after a dose. It approaches the potency of fentanyl. Someone taking a 7-OH tablet is manufacturing a near-fentanyl-strength compound in their own bloodstream, with no dose control and usually no label warning.

Compound What it is Relative strength Share of raw leaf
Mitragynine Main natural alkaloid, partial opioid agonist Baseline About 1 percent of powder
7-OH Trace natural metabolite, now mass-produced in labs 5 to 50 times mitragynine; stronger than morphine Under 0.1 percent
MP Lab derivative; also forms from 7-OH in human plasma Approaches fentanyl Not present in dried leaf
Speciociliatine, paynantheine, speciogynine, corynantheidine, mitraphylline Minor alkaloids and oxindoles Minor or unstudied Trace

That distinction now carries legal weight. The DEA's scheduling action covers concentrated 7-OH above a threshold and exempts botanical kratom containing naturally occurring 7-OH below it. Federal law now treats the leaf and the lab product as different substances.

Part 3: What It Does To People

Dependence forms quietly

Regular use produces tolerance, craving, and cross-tolerance to morphine. Tolerance drives the pattern: receptors adapt, the original dose stops working, and users increase both amount and frequency. Dependence builds across months rather than announcing itself.

Traditional leaf tea delivers a fraction of the alkaloid load in an extract shot or a 7-OH tablet. Dependence forms faster on the concentrated products, and withdrawal hits harder.

Withdrawal

Withdrawal starts 12 to 48 hours after the last dose and usually clears in three to five days. Mood swings, disrupted sleep, and episodic craving can run for weeks past that.

Phase Timing What happens
Onset 12 to 48 hours after last dose Restlessness, craving, sweating
Peak Days 1 to 3 Stomach and bowel distress, muscle pain, insomnia, strongest craving
Resolution Days 3 to 5 typically Gradual return to baseline
Post-acute Weeks to months Mood swings, poor sleep, craving that returns in waves

Physical symptoms: muscle and joint pain, spasms, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, cramping, runny nose, watery eyes, yawning, hot flashes, chills, insomnia, faster heart rate, higher blood pressure, tremors, itching, appetite loss.

Psychological symptoms: depression, anxiety, irritability, hostility, restlessness, mental fog, memory trouble, and heavy craving. Most people who go through it describe the psychological side as the harder half.

A minority of cases go past discomfort. Hallucinations, severe agitation, and seizures are documented. Heavy or long-term users should taper with medical help instead of stopping cold. Infants born to mothers using regularly show a withdrawal syndrome of their own, with feeding intolerance, restlessness, irritability, and vomiting.

The combination that kills

Kratom is rarely alone in a fatal case. Federal surveillance of kratom-positive overdose deaths found fentanyl and its analogs named as a cause of death in 65.1 percent of those decedents. The chart below shows why polysubstance use, not kratom by itself, drives the mortality picture.

Fentanyl Involvement in Kratom-Positive Overdose Deaths

Source: CDC, Notes from the Field — Unintentional Drug Overdose Deaths with Kratom Detected (MMWR)

Read that as a warning about what kratom is mixed with, not as proof that kratom alone is harmless. Both substances suppress breathing. Stacking them multiplies the risk, and most packages carry no warning that the product interacts with other depressants at all.

Combined with Risk
Fentanyl or other opioids Both suppress breathing; the dominant fatal pattern nationally
Alcohol Present in all of Los Angeles County's recent kratom-linked deaths; state health officials single this out as the combination to avoid
Benzodiazepines and sleep aids Compounded sedation, can be fatal
Prescription medications Unpredictable interactions and severe respiratory depression

Recognizing an overdose

Treat it as an opioid overdose

Slowed, shallow, or stopped breathing. Unresponsive and cannot be woken. Pinpoint pupils. Blue or grey lips and fingertips. Choking, gurgling, or snoring sounds. Limp body, cold or clammy skin.

Give naloxone. Call 911. Stay with the person. Because 7-OH lasts longer than some opioids, one dose may not hold. California's Good Samaritan protections cover people who call for help during an overdose.

Part 4: The Law As of Today

Three layers of law now apply, and they arrived in a specific order.

Federal

Kratom itself is not scheduled. The DEA lists it as a Drug and Chemical of Concern and withdrew a 2016 scheduling attempt after public backlash. The Food and Drug Administration has never approved it as a drug, a dietary supplement, or a food additive, which makes every product on the market legally adulterated and unapproved.

That changed for the derivative. On July 1, 2026, the DEA announced it will temporarily place 7-OH and three related substances into Schedule I. The Federal Register notice published July 6. Once effective, manufacture, distribution, and possession fall under the criminal, civil, and administrative provisions of the Controlled Substances Act. HHS and FDA both endorsed the action. Concentrated 7-OH is becoming a federally controlled narcotic.

California

California acted months before the federal government did.

Date Action
October 24, 2025 CDPH declares kratom and 7-OH products dangerous and illegal to manufacture or sell for human consumption
January 2026 CDPH opens active enforcement; retailers ordered to clear shelves; complaint hotline promoted
January 14, 2026 Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control warns every licensee to stop sales or face action against their liquor license
February 19, 2026 CDPH issues formal retailer and public warning notice
March 3, 2026 State reports 95 percent compliance, 3,308 products removed
July 15, 2026 State reports 97.70 percent compliance, 6,960 products removed

California Kratom and 7-OH Products Pulled From Shelves

Source: Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, March 3 and July 15, 2026 announcements

Nearly 7,000 removed products across four months tells you the size of the retail market. This is hundreds of brands and thousands of individual items, not a handful of specialty products.

The legal theory matters for anyone tracking enforcement records. California treats these products as adulterated food or drugs under the Health and Safety Code, not as narcotics. Enforcement runs through inspection, embargo, and seizure. There is no state criminal penalty for selling. Possession and personal use are not illegal. The paper trail lives in environmental health inspection files, not in police reports.

Cities and counties

Local governments across California filled the gap with ordinances. San Joaquin County did not.

Jurisdiction Action taken
San Mateo County Board voted 5-0 to ban sale and distribution of kratom and 7-OH in unincorporated areas, naming tablets, gummies, drink mixes, and liquid shots. Violations treated as a public nuisance carrying fines up to $1,000, up to six months in jail, and permit revocation
Los Angeles County Retailer notice covering kratom, 7-OH, and tianeptine; health inspectors running sweeps of tobacco shops; Medical Examiner confirmed six fatal 7-OH overdoses in adults 18 to 40 between April 2025 and January 2026
Fresno County Board voted November 18, 2025 to bar sales to anyone under 21
Ventura County Retailer fact sheet and consumer guidance; Medical Examiner linked 46 overdose deaths to mitragynine since 2018
Yolo County Supervisors publicly raised the issue citing seven deaths since 2017
Orange County Dana Point passed a city ordinance with county supervisor support
Sonoma County Retailer letter noting kratom sold in large quantities by many tobacco retailers
San Luis Obispo County Prohibition letter to retailers citing adulteration law
San Francisco Public information campaign on kratom and 7-OH
San Joaquin County No ordinance. No retailer notice. No consumer advisory. No published data.

Part 5: Where It Is Sold in Lodi and San Joaquin County

Kratom has been sold inside Lodi city limits. Public customer reviews for a smoke shop on Park Street discuss the store's kratom pricing directly. Lodi's tobacco retail category also includes storefronts on East Pine Street and West Turner Road.

A peer-reviewed survey of California vape and smoke shops measured how the product moves. The pattern is sharp enough to target inspections with.

Kratom Availability by California Retail Shop Type

Source: Bowdring et al., Kratom availability in California vape shops, peer-reviewed survey data

Shops that sell both vape hardware and tobacco carried kratom at seven times the rate of vape-only shops. Any inspection program that starts with combined smoke shops will find product faster than one that treats all retailers equally.

The channels

  • Smoke shops and combined vape-and-tobacco stores — the primary outlet
  • Gas stations and convenience stores — the second channel, and the source of the "gas station heroin" nickname
  • Liquor stores and licensed alcohol retailers — significant enough that state ABC issued a dedicated licensee warning
  • Online vendors — shipping to residential addresses, the hardest channel to reach

Products arrive as liquid shots, tablets, gummies, capsules, foil powder pouches, drink mixes, bottled beverages, and vape cartridges. They usually sit at the register, in a counter display, or behind glass with the vape hardware. They are not in a supplement aisle.

Part 6: What To Look For on the Shelf

Labeling is built to avoid recognition. Three tiers of terms catch products at different levels of evasion.

Two things limit any brand list, including this one. Brand identity does not predict contents, because 7-OH products are routinely sold as kratom while containing the lab derivative instead of the plant. And the industry concedes the problem: the American Kratom Association, the sector's own trade group, warned in early 2025 about deceptively labeled 7-OH products sold as kratom.

Part 7: What San Joaquin County Has Not Done

Kratom does not show up on a standard drug screen. Detecting it requires an expanded panel that specifically assays for mitragynine. Every California county that reports kratom deaths reports them because a medical examiner chose to run that test.

Ventura County's 46 deaths exist as a number because Ventura looked. Los Angeles County's six 7-OH deaths exist because Los Angeles looked. Yolo County's seven exist because Yolo looked.

Kratom-Linked Deaths Reported by California Counties

Sources: Ventura County Medical Examiner (since 2018), Los Angeles County Medical Examiner (April 2025 to January 2026), Yolo County Board of Supervisors (since 2017). San Joaquin County has published no figure.

The red bar is not a claim that San Joaquin County has zero kratom deaths. It marks the absence of a number. Statewide, CDPH attributed 242 California deaths to kratom involvement from 2020 through 2022, with 27 caused by the product alone. Nationally, CDC data implicated kratom in 846 fatal overdoses in 2022 across 30 states and the District of Columbia. San Joaquin County appears in none of the county-level figures because it has not produced one.

Here is why that gap compounds. San Joaquin County's overdose response focuses on fentanyl, and reasonably so — the county recorded 113 fentanyl-related deaths in 2022 and 315 opioid-related emergency room visits. But fentanyl appears in roughly two-thirds of kratom-positive overdose deaths nationally. If the coroner does not test for mitragynine, kratom-involved deaths in this county are being filed as ordinary fentanyl cases. This is a data quality problem inside the county's own top public health priority, not a side issue.

Where the data would live

Data Who holds it Status
Deaths SJC Sheriff-Coroner, toxicology Screening practice not public
Store enforcement SJC Environmental Health, inspection records Filed as food adulteration, not as crime data
Citizen reports CDPH complaint hotline Not broken out by county
Emergency visits SJC Public Health and state hospital data No kratom-specific reporting published
Poison calls California Poison Control System Rising statewide; county detail not published
Policy activity SJC Board of Supervisors and Lodi City Council agendas No kratom item on record

Part 8: What Should Happen Next

San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors

  1. Ask the Sheriff-Coroner one question in writing: does standard postmortem toxicology include mitragynine and 7-OH? If not, direct that it be added. This costs almost nothing and is the only action that makes every other question answerable.
  2. Order a look back at overdose deaths where the cause was undetermined or where opioid findings did not match reported use.
  3. Direct Environmental Health to run proactive inspection sweeps of tobacco retailers, gas stations, convenience stores, and liquor licensees under existing state authority. This requires no new ordinance and could begin this month.
  4. Adopt a sales ordinance on the San Mateo model, naming product formats explicitly so sellers cannot reclassify their way around it.
  5. Publish the results — stores inspected, products embargoed, compliance rate — as an open dataset.

Lodi City Council

  1. Request a staff report on kratom and 7-OH availability inside city limits.
  2. Pass a municipal sales prohibition. A county ordinance reaches only unincorporated areas, so Lodi, Stockton, Tracy, and Manteca each need their own.
  3. Direct code enforcement and the Police Department to coordinate with county Environmental Health on retailer compliance.
  4. Add kratom to youth prevention messaging through Lodi Unified.

San Joaquin County Public Health Services

  1. Issue a retailer notice, matching what Ventura, Sonoma, San Luis Obispo, and Los Angeles counties already published.
  2. Issue a consumer advisory in English and Spanish, leading with the alcohol interaction and the fentanyl co-use risk.
  3. Fold kratom into the existing fentanyl awareness campaign rather than building a separate one.
  4. Brief emergency departments and first responders that naloxone works and that a kratom overdose can present as an unexplained opioid overdose.

Clinicians and first responders

  • Mitragynine requires a specially ordered expanded panel. It will not appear on a routine screen.
  • Treat a suspected kratom overdose as an opioid overdose. Naloxone is indicated, and a repeat dose may be needed.
  • Consider kratom in any opioid-presenting overdose with a negative standard screen.
  • Ask about it directly during a substance history. Patients often do not count it as a drug because they bought it at a gas station. Ask about the format too — a shot or a tablet means concentrated 7-OH, not leaf.

Residents

  • These products are illegal to sell. Seeing them on a shelf is worth a call to (800) 495-3232.
  • Do not mix kratom or 7-OH with alcohol, opioids, or benzodiazepines.
  • Carry naloxone. It works on this.
  • Anything sold as an opioid withdrawal aid will build its own dependence.
  • Parents: look for small plastic shot bottles, brightly packaged gummies, and blister-packed tablets carrying any Tier 1 or Tier 3 term above.

How We Reported This

This report draws on federal sources including FDA, DEA, CDC, NIDA, and HHS; California sources including CDPH, the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, and the Governor's Office; county records and public statements from Ventura, Los Angeles, San Mateo, Sonoma, San Luis Obispo, Fresno, Orange, Yolo, and San Francisco; and peer-reviewed research on California retail availability, kratom use disorder, and kratom chemistry.

Limitations readers should weigh

No San Joaquin County kratom surveillance data exists in the public record. Local retail presence rests on public business listings and customer reviews, not on an inspection we conducted. Statements about how common these products are in Lodi are extrapolated from statewide retail survey data and are labeled as such throughout.

Nothing here is a count of San Joaquin County kratom deaths. No agency has produced one. The DEA scheduling action is temporary and was announced July 1, 2026; readers checking this report later should verify its current status and effective date.

This report is informational. It is not medical or legal advice.

LodiEye is the original civic-reporting and analysis arm of Lodi411.com, a citizen-run civic data and transparency platform serving Lodi, California and San Joaquin County. LodiEye gathers information of public interest, applies editorial judgment to public records, meetings, and data, and publishes original explanatory reporting for its readers — the work of a newsroom, and a representative of the news media as that term is defined under federal law. Our reporting emphasizes primary sources, public data, and full source transparency so readers can check every claim. LodiEye complements, and does not replace, the other outlets covering this region; for additional reporting on Lodi, San Joaquin County, and the broader region, we also encourage readers to consult the Lodi News-Sentinel, Stocktonia, The Sacramento Bee, CalMatters, and other established news organizations. Our full editorial standards and news-media-status statement is published at lodi411.com/editorial-standards.

This LodiEye public health report was produced using artificial intelligence tools under the direction and review of the founder. Lodi411 uses multiple AI platforms in its research and publication workflow, including Anthropic's Claude (primarily Opus and Sonnet models) and Perplexity AI across a variety of large language models offered by each. These tools were used in the following capacities:

Source Discovery: AI-assisted search and retrieval identified more than 50 sources across federal agencies (FDA, DEA, CDC, NIDA, HHS, the Federal Register), California state agencies (CDPH, Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, Office of the Governor), nine county health departments and boards of supervisors, peer-reviewed pharmacology and public health literature indexed in PubMed and PMC, a state kratom product registry, and local business listings for Lodi tobacco retailers. Perplexity AI was used for initial source discovery and real-time retrieval of the July 2026 DEA scheduling action; Claude was used for deeper analysis of the identified records.

Credibility Validation: AI cross-referenced claims across multiple independent sources, prioritizing in this order: government datasets and official agency notices, peer-reviewed research, county institutional analysis and medical examiner findings, and news reporting. Multiple AI models independently verified the compliance percentages and product-removal counts, the county death figures, the CDC fentanyl co-occurrence share, and the alkaloid potency ratios, and flagged an inconsistency in an earlier draft that described California enforcement as civil-only after the federal scheduling action had already changed that status for 7-OH.

Analysis and Synthesis: Claude Opus and Sonnet assisted in identifying the central pattern in this report — that county-level kratom mortality figures exist only where a medical examiner ordered an expanded toxicology panel, which reframes the absence of San Joaquin County data as a measurement gap rather than an absence of harm. The models also assisted in developing the three-tier label dictionary used in Part 6, in building the comparative county enforcement table, and in tracing the connection between the county's fentanyl-focused surveillance and the likely undercounting of kratom-involved deaths.

Presentation: Claude assisted in drafting, structuring, and formatting the report for clarity and readability, including the reader-first ordering that places emergency guidance and phone numbers ahead of background material, the four Kendo UI data visualizations and their source notes, the withdrawal timeline and compound comparison tables, and the shelf-audit reference boxes intended for printing and field use.

Final Review: Multiple AI models reviewed the completed draft for factual consistency, source attribution accuracy, logical coherence, and balanced presentation, including a check that the report does not overstate local harm beyond what the record supports. Throughout the process, the editor sets the report's goals, scope, and tone; creates and shapes draft content; reviews and edits the report; integrates independent fact checks; and reviews the AI cross-checks and validations. Multi-tool cross-checking across independent models and sources is the primary error-reduction mechanism.

Lodi411/LodiEye believes that transparency about how our research is produced — including our use of AI under human direction — strengthens trust with readers and the broader information ecosystem. Readers who spot an error are encouraged to write editor@lodi411.com so we can correct it.

References

Federal

California

Counties and cities

San Joaquin County

Research

Help and reporting

  • Emergency: 911
  • SJC Behavioral Health access line, 24 hours: 209-468-9370 / 1-888-468-9370
  • SAMHSA National Helpline: 1-800-662-4357
  • Poison Control: 1-800-222-1222
  • Report illegal kratom or 7-OH sales, CDPH: (800) 495-3232
  • Corrections and tips: editor@lodi411.com
Don Bradford
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