Legal Implications of Florida’s 7-OH Ban
Yesterday’s vices are today’s health fads and vice versa. In the 80s and 90s, sophisticated types saw vegetarianism as the wave of the future, kind, environmentally sustainable, and best of all healthy. You were a barbarian if you chomped on beef jerky while others ate veggie burgers. Today, the loudest voices in public discourse espouse a carnivore diet. By their logic, those who eat veggie burgers do so at their own peril. The question is not whether the carbs in the bread will lead them on a path to obesity, type II diabetes, and cardiovascular disease; it is whether this will happen before or after the soy protein renders them infertile and therefore powerless to counteract the falling birth rates in the developed world. Back then, the tastemakers drank Diet Coke while the slackers smoked marijuana, but today it is the opposite. Ever since the wave of medical cannabis laws a decade ago, the idea has become less far-fetched that our favorite banned substances are just a referendum away from legitimacy. Of course, the reverse can happen, too, but only when lawmakers know that your favorite drug exists and are aware of how potent it is. This partially explains why you can get such an assortment of pep pills at smoke shops and gas stations, as well as why the list of controlled substances keeps growing. Here, our Miami drug crimes defense lawyer explains the recently enacted law that categorizes 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH), a derivative of kratom, as a Schedule I controlled substance.
How Is 7-OH Different From Kratom?
The term kratom refers to the leaves of the Mitragyna speciosa tree, which grows in Southeast Asia. When smoked or consumed as a beverage or pill, kratom has stimulant effects. 7-OH is just one of the many psychoactive compounds that occur naturally in kratom leaves, and the concentration of kratom is low when one smokes or ingests whole kratom leaves.
Recently, manufacturers have been extracting 7-OH from kratom leaves and selling pills that contain a high concentration of 7-OH. These highly concentrated forms of 7-OH were the intended target of the new law, but like so much in Florida, the law has plenty of ambiguities.
Why Is 7-OH a Schedule I Controlled Substance?
In August 2025, Florida added 7-OH to the list of Schedule I controlled substances. This drug schedule includes the most dangerous drugs, the ones so dangerous that they are not approved for any medical use. Heroin and MDMA are Schedule I controlled substances, whereas fentanyl and cocaine are Schedule II because, in some medical applications, their benefit outweighs their risk.
How did 7-OH go from being just another permutation of “gas station heroin” to being as illegal as real heroin? Just ask the owners of the smoke shops that sold it. They were alarmed to see how 7-OH turned their customers into, in their words, “zombies,” in ways that the many other marginally legal drugs in their inventory did not. Poison control centers received numerous calls about 7-OH overdoses, and 40 patients in Florida died with 7-OH in their systems in the year leading up to the passage of the law.
Of course, leave it to Florida to take away any legal form of pain relief as soon as they find it. 7-OH enthusiasts tend to use it for pain relief; in some cases, it was what prevented them from relapsing on opioids. A great capacity for pain relief is not the only characteristic that 7-OH shares with opioids, though; it can also cause severe withdrawal symptoms.
Is Kratom Still Legal in Florida?
The law that declares 7-OH a Schedule I controlled substance does not specify a concentration at which 7-OH becomes illegal. Therefore, it is possible to interpret the law to mean that all kratom products are illegal in Florida. Meanwhile, kratom remains available for sale in some smoke shops. Ask the old generation heads how this works, and they will tell you with a smile that lumping all kratom products into the ban on 7-OH is like arguing that the hemp in your Birkenstocks is technically marijuana because it contains trace amounts of THC. This means that, if you get caught with kratom in possession, reasonable doubt may be on your side.
Contact Our Criminal Defense Attorneys
A South Florida criminal defense lawyer can help you seek justice and present the best defenses if you were charged with illegal possession of kratom or 7-OH products. Contact Ratzan & Faccidomo in Miami, Florida for a confidential consultation about your case.
Sources:
cbsnews.com/miami/news/florida-inspectors-crack-down-on-banned-chemical-7-oh-in-smoke-shops/
mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news/2025/10/14/kratom-compound-banned-in-florida
