Botanic Tonics, the maker of an addictive, opioid-like kratom drink sold in convenience stores around the nation, told a Columbus judge last week that it has been selling about 59,000 Feel Free bottles in Ohio per day.
That works out to roughly 21.5 million bottles a year (at $10 each) – a pace the company says has at times outsold 5-Hour Energy.
Behind the hundreds of millions in annual revenue from Feel Free and other kratom products lies a trail of Ohioans who say they’ve become addicted to the east Asian-originated plant with the same ferocity as illegal substances like heroin and fentanyl. One Lancaster woman told state officials how the yearslong kratom addiction of her husband, who’s recovering from opioid addiction, started with the blue bottles of Feel Free sold at a convenience store.
“For people in recovery, it is not a harmless plant – it is another addictive drug that threatens to undo years of hard work and healing,” she said.
Doctors who specialize in addiction treatment have called kratom a looming public health disaster. They, along with some of its users, say the drug is as addictive as heroin, with nastier withdrawal symptoms.
Regardless, there’s no minimum legal age to purchase kratom from the gas stations and head shops that carry it. And more recently, concentrated synthetics derived from natural kratom like 7-OH have emerged at scale. Kratom isn’t even taxed beyond common goods, unlike its counterparts like booze, tobacco, gambling and marijuana.
State lawmakers have tried since 2019 to modestly rein in the kratom industry with age requirements and licensing rules. All failed in the GOP-controlled statehouse as two kratom trade associations and one major player have built out a lobbying force. After the legislative push, Ohio regulators last year advanced an emergency rule that would make processed kratom products (including Feel Free) a Schedule I substance, meaning felony convictions for possession.
Franklin County Judge Mark Serrott last week upheld the rule until a trial, a decision the company says it plans to appeal.
Botanic Tonics provided the sales data in a request for a 10-day stay of Serrott’s ruling so it can move its inventory to other states where Feel Free remains legal. Serrott granted the request.
The state ban would not prohibit the sale of kratom in its leaf form, a decision questioned by several addiction treatment practitioners in interviews.
The sales data, while self-reported, is another data point showing the exploding popularity of kratom in Ohio and the U.S. – the CDC recently reported that kratom exposures reported to poison control hotlines surged 1200% since 2015 and more than doubled from 2024 to 2025.
“Kratom and its analogues are a public health disaster,” said Dr. Theodore Parran, a Northeast Ohio physician, in comments to the Ohio Board of Pharmacy. “I have been admitting almost as many patients per week withdrawing from kratom and its analogues as I am from fentanyl for at least the past year.”
The company didn’t respond to written inquiries.
‘This has nearly ruined my life’
On any given week, 16,000 people visit r/QuittingFeelFree, a Reddit page that acts as a support group for users trying to quit.
Feel Free, brought to market in 2020, uses raw kratom in its tonic. But more recently, some industry players have learned to concentrate some of the compounds of kratom into a synthetic known as 7-OH.
Ben Houk, 34, of Xenia, was clean of a heroin and fentanyl habit when he first heard about kratom in 2022. He started with the natural leaf form and the occasional Feel Free, then on to 7-OH. He thinks he spent $10,000 on kratom that year. It cost him his job as an arborist and unraveled his marriage. He lost 40 pounds and wound up in the hospital with heart palpitations.
At a certain point, he was taking kratom to avoid the increasingly heavy withdrawal symptoms.
“That grabbed a hold of my life like nothing I’d ever felt before,” he said in an interview.
He said the kratom has been harder to kick than fentanyl or heroin, in large part because you know it’s there every time you drive past a gas station. When withdrawing, he couldn’t sleep for days.
“I just had to sit there and realize how much this has nearly ruined my life,” he said.
Four women who identified themselves as wives or fiancées of Ohioans addicted to kratom sent letters to the Ohio Board of Pharmacy, obtained in a public records request, urging the regulators forward on their bans.
Signal Statewide has reached out to the senders and is not identifying them without their permission.
“I know he has to take responsibility for his use and action but the first time he took a pill it was given to him FOR FREE as a sample from the clerk at the corner store,” one woman wrote.
“It was given to him as a ‘natural herbal supplement’ to boost energy and help with anxiety. What was left out was that stuff is essentially legal heroin. I am praying everyday for this to be banned and maybe when it is he will be able to actually stay sober for more than a few days at a time. This is an evil product and should 100% be taken off the shelves and made illegal.”
‘Getting sick is so bad’
In interviews and letters to the Board of Pharmacy, doctors and addiction treatment providers emphasized the cycles of addiction and withdrawal are nearly identical between heroin and kratom.
“Both Kratom and its analogues have absolutely no demonstrated legitimate medical purpose and no societal purpose,” Parran, a physician who treats patients with kratom addiction, said.
“The ‘advocates’ for Kratom and the producers and distributors are duplicitous in their words and actions, and if not banned the substance will clearly be the next primary opioid in our State’s opioid epidemic.”
At Stella Maris, an addiction treatment provider in Cleveland, three or four people come in every month detoxing from kratom, according to Carole Negus, the director of nursing. Some used kratom in its leaf form. Some the drinks. Some the 7-OH. She insists it is “absolutely, 100% an opiate.” Of her last seven patients, six have been using 7-OH specifically, but she said it should all be banned – not just this or that kratom product.
The withdrawal is terrible. Some are sick for a week, often with extreme nausea, she said, plus fits, sweats, chills, muscle aches, and more. Some patients have reported overdoses in the form of “significant seizures.”
“Getting sick is so bad you keep going back to use it,” she said. “And it’s easy to get.”
Dr. Julie Teater, a psychiatrist and addiction medicine physician at the Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State University, said the business impacts to the industry are outweighed by the “substantial and well-documented risks” with kratom.
“Preventing avoidable drug-related harms is a critical priority for the state of Ohio,” she said.
Ohio’s ban applies only to processed kratom. A parallel state effort to ban the raw leaf has stalled – the Board of Pharmacy shelved it in July before a special panel that considers all “business-impacting” regulations.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration proposed its own ban on concentrated synthetics like 7-OH on July 1, but that wouldn’t touch loose-leaf kratom or products like Feel Free.
Two companies with checkered legal histories challenge Ohio’s ban
Two companies remain party to the legal effort to challenge Ohio’s ban: Botanic Tonics and Krazy Daze, a retailer.
Krazy Daze has recently come into legal trouble. On July 10, officers with the Ohio Investigative Unit, which investigates state-regulated industries like alcohol or marijuana, raided two Krazy Daze locations and two other stores suspected of illegal drug sales. Officers left with carfuls of “unregulated marijuana, THC products, and kratom.” An OIU spokesperson said the case has been turned over to the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney’s office.
The other, Botanic Tonics, was founded in 2020 by JW Ross, who in 2010 pleaded guilty to securities charges after he (under his former name of Jerry Cash) was accused of stealing $10 million from investors in an energy company.
Ross has since stepped down as CEO of Botanic Tonics but remains its chairman.
The company has drawn intense federal scrutiny. In 2023, federal marshals seized 250,000 bottles of Feel Free from its Oklahoma warehouse. Late last year, the FDA dropped its case. The company said the regulators have come to appreciate the distinction between its use of kratom and the synthetic derived from kratom like 7-OH.
It has a powerful investor – Markwayne Mullin, the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary who until recently served in the U.S. Senate has invested between $500,000 and $1 million in the company, according to a financial statement first reported by The New York Times.
The company has emphasized a peer-reviewed study published earlier this year that found no adverse events after daily, single doses of kratom powder and “no evidence of meaningful abuse potential or withdrawal.” The study itself, however, notes as a potential conflict of interest that a company called NP Pharma funded the study.
This article originally appeared on Signal Ohio’s website.