The drug you keep seeing at vape shops has a dark side

Kratom products are advertised everywhere — at gas stations, smoke shops, and vape stores — but comedian and filmmaker Davey Jackson believes the rapidly growing industry deserves far more scrutiny.

In a new documentary, Jackson examines how concentrated kratom extracts and synthetic derivatives have transformed a once-obscure plant into a multibillion-dollar industry.

“There’s basically three categories. There’s natural powder leaf kratom, which a lot of people use and have used successfully for, you know, a lot of years. And then there’s a slightly newer product, and it’s an extract,” Jackson tells BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales.

“So they’re basically extracting and concentrating the kratom into these drinks ... which that’s a whole other story. And then they have these synthetic products like 7-OH or MGM-15 or MGM-16 that the DEA is in the process of banning right now,” he explains.

Gonzales points out that “there’s big money in the industry,” referencing the company Feel Free.

“That’s an interesting one. So they got their start giving away their products on college campuses, just handing them out to college students. And again, this is a fairly addictive thing that we’re dealing with here,” Jackson says.

“These Feel Free shots, you know, they’re not as bad as the 7-OH tablets that are getting banned right now, but they’re certainly habit-forming. Much more potent than the actual kratom product,” he explains, noting that the founder of Feel Free is “an ex-con” who “spent time in federal prison for fraud.”

“They’re the number one retail kratom product in America. I want to say they’re doing $250 million a year in sales. They’ve been investigated by the DOJ ... and they actually are a big part of the kratom conspiracy that we were investigating,” he continues.

“It just must all come down to money, right? Whoever is making money wants to keep it alive,” Gonzales says.

“Yeah,” Jackson agrees. “So you’ve got companies like Feel Free who absolutely want to keep it alive and have lobbied to keep the kratom industry unregulated to a large extent, but they were also a big part of the push behind the ban for 7-OH because 7-OH was, you know, kind of taking up market share.”

“They’re making $250 million a year already, but obviously they want to make more. And then of course, there’s Big Pharma. You know, people that are taking 7-OH that you can buy at a gas station or a smoke shop,” he continues.

“Granted,” he adds, “I don’t think it’s safe from a regulatory perspective as far as what they’re actually putting in this stuff because I’ve heard multiple times there’s 7-OH that’s been tested that has [fentanyl] in it. I mean, that’s horribly dangerous, right?”

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