Kratom crisis exposed: I went undercover at the stores peddling opioid-like legal highs

‘Have as much as you want,’ the shopkeeper said, grinning from ear to ear as he pushed a stack of opioid-like drugs towards me.

I was standing not in some shady backwater, but in a store on a leafy street in one of New York City’s wealthiest neighborhoods. 

Before me were shelves crammed with powders, capsules, gummies and lollipops galore. Almost all contained the potentially addictive substance that has come to be known as ‘gas station heroin.’

I had already told the man peddling the products that I had never tried them before. That didn’t seem to matter.

After an undercover investigation, the Daily Mail can expose the unscrupulous sales tactics fueling America’s $1.5 billion-a-year love affair with kratom.

Derived from leaves of Mitragyna speciosa, a tropical tree native to Southeast Asia, kratom is legal in much of America. It remains largely unregulated at the federal level despite urgent warnings from health authorities about its dire risks of opioid-like effects and addiction.

Calls for a crackdown have intensified after the deaths of the University of Mississippi students Aidan Hamilton, 18, and Robert Strang, 20, last month. Investigators say they found open packages of synthetic kratom tablets near their bodies.

Yet neon signs advertising the risky substance have sprung up on practically every corner around Manhattan’s Washington Square Park, dotted between the student dorms where New York University freshmen gather for their first weeks away from home.

Some states have imposed stricter regulations on kratom, while others have banned it altogether. In New York, kratom is legal, but customers must be 21 years or older to purchase it.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is now aiming to temporarily classify four substances linked to kratom as Schedule 1 under the Controlled Substances Act. Schedule 1 substances include heroin, fentanyl, LSD and MDMA.

The DEA has yet to act as a final temporary scheduling order for 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH) – a compound found in kratom – remains pending as of November 2026.

Drawn to this gray area, I went to shop after shop in New York, asking questions and seeing just how far shopkeepers were willing to go to sell me copious amounts of kratom. 

The Daily Mail was sold five types of kratom product containing varying levels of the active ingredients. 

Only some carried specific warnings about their use and effects. None of the products sold are illegal yet according to DEA regulations. Any risk to consumers would likely vary depending on the potency of the individual product, the amount consumed at once or over time and additional factors.

Striking up conversation with sellers, I said I was pregnant, that I suffered from anxiety and depression, and that I wanted to buy a ‘huge stash so my friends and I could experiment with tons kratom at a party.’

I also asked whether the drug had side effects and whether I could mix it with alcohol. I deliberately presented myself as a complete novice, someone who knew very little about what I was buying.

I wanted to know what would happen if I asked the naive questions a first time customer might ask before trying an unfamiliar psychoactive substance.

And I was floored to find that in most of the shops I visited, nobody demanded identification. The shops I visited would never have known I was of legal age because they simply did not ask. There was little to stop someone much younger from walking in and making the same requests.

And the more I asked, the more products I was encouraged to consider. Drinks. Teas. Lollipops. Pills. 

So what exactly was I being sold so readily?

At lower amounts, kratom can produce stimulant-like effects; at higher amounts, its effects can produce sedative effects or even be lethal.

Two of its best-known compounds, Mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine, interact with opioid receptors in the brain similarly to drugs like Oxycodone.

The products on shop shelves marketed as kratom vary considerably. Some contain ground kratom leaf, while others contain concentrated extracts or enhanced formulations with much more potent levels of compounds such as 7-OH. 

This can make it difficult for customers to judge precisely what they are taking, or how strong a product might be from its packaging alone. 

That type of cryptic marketing is known all too well by Holly Trouville, who lost her only child, her 25-year-old son, Tyrell, on February 6, 2024 due to kratom toxicity. His death certificate lists no secondary causes or other opioids in his system.

‘Tyrell drank a kratom seltzer drink marketed as sugar-free, alcohol-free, caffeine-free, and had less than the two percent 7-OH in the drink that advocates claim is safe,’ Trouville told me. 

‘My son is already gone, so my only goal is to prevent another parent from feeling the complete and utter devastation I feel on a daily basis,’ Trouville said. 

‘The fact that users say it helps them stay off opioids does not diminish the addictive properties of it. Regulation does not work.’

Tyrell was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, graduated from Dracut High School and served in the state’s US Army Reserve, his mother said. She is now calling for a complete ban on the substance that killed him.

Kylee Matlock was younger still, only 20, when kratom devoured her life before leaving her dead three years later. Employee of the month, she was going to school to be a forensic accountant before the drug struck, her mother Tia Rustici told me.

That was before she was introduced to kratom. Kylee, from Idaho, had postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome disease (POTS) and was recommended the diluted powder as a ‘gentle herbal alternative’ as she didn’t want the ‘strength of opioids.’ Like many others, she discovered too late just how alike the two really are.

Tia says she watched on helplessly as she saw her daughter withdraw from her, school and eventually loose her job. ‘She would get agitated and irritated, she would sleep all day and we wouldn’t see her emerge from her room till 6pm.’

‘We tried everything, from discussions and doctor’s appointments to counselling, it was heartbreaking, we were watching ourselves loose our daughter right before our eyes.’

Things deteriorated so swiftly that Tia decided it was best for Kylee to move in with her grandmother to the eastern side of the state, wanting to see if a change in scenery would help Kylee get herself back on track.

But six weeks later Tia received three words that would shatter her world: ‘Kylee is gone.’

It took nearly two months for Tia to find out that kratom was the silent killer behind her daughter’s passing. That and her antidepressants were the only two things found in her system.

Some people who take kratom believe it can be beneficial, but it has not been shown to be safe or treat any medical conditions, and American health authorities have been warning about its potential risks for years. 

The DEA calls kratom a drug of concern, citing seizures, liver toxicity, anorexia, sedation, addiction and substance use disorder among the serious problems associated with it.

I told some shop assistants I was pregnant, curious to see whether that would give them pause. It should have. Kratom use during pregnancy has been linked to withdrawal in newborns, with some babies needing urgent medical treatment. 

Yet this is not the sort of risk a first-time customer is necessarily going to know about – particularly when the product is sitting on a shelf beside sweets and energy drinks.

One of the most striking moments came when I asked for four times the regular dosage.

Would the shopkeeper hesitate? Would she ask about my experience? She was willing to sell it to me.

When I subsequently described myself as a regular user in another shop, I encountered no greater concern. ‘It’s a lot of fun isn’t it,’ the shopkeeper winked.

I raised anxiety and depression in a third shop, asking whether despite having anxiety I could also use kratom. 

‘Yeah,’ he replied with utter nonchalance. ‘It could definitely give you a common euphoric effect.’

There is a reason people reach for it: in one study, around two-thirds of users said they took it to manage anxiety or depression.

Kratom has not been established as a safe or effective treatment for either condition. The same study found that roughly one third of users met the criteria for another substance use disorder.

Alcohol was another test. One particularly blasé seller told me I could ‘wash it down’ with a drink. And when I asked if there were any side effects at all he looked incredulous. ‘Kratom? No, no side effects,’ he said laughing at me.

Experts say combining kratom with alcohol can intensify sedation and increase the risk of dangerous effects, including breathing problems. 

Poison control centers in the United States received more than 3,400 reports about use of kratom from 2014 through 2019. These included reports of death. During 2015 to 2025, kratom-related exposures reported to National Poison Data System increased by approximately 1,200 percent, reaching record levels in 2025.

In 2025, among all multiple-substance exposure reports, 60 percent resulted in serious medical outcomes and approximately one half required hospitalization.

And it was against this concerning backdrop that I decided to push one last shop assistant even further still.

I asked a man whether I could buy up the entire shop’s supply of kratom. Rather than question why I might want so much of the substance, or express concern about what I intended to do with it, he responded with enthusiasm that took me aback.

‘Yeah, have a kratom party,’ he suggested, batting my worries away he added with full conviction: ‘It will be a very pleasant experience.’ The breezy endorsement was striking given what I was proposing was consuming over 12,600mg.

My visits left me with a deeply troubling impression. The willingness to sell more products appeared far more evident than any concern about the risks I was asking about.

For a trade facing mounting scrutiny, the question is no longer simply what is in the packet. It is what customers are being told before they hand over their money.

Because when a substance can have powerful opioid-like effects, the difference between responsible retailing and reckless reassurance matters.

And like Tyrell and Kylee and many others, nobody should have to discover the potential dangers only after they have walked out of the shop.