A year after Louisiana’s kratom ban, ArkLaTex families and advocates weigh risks and access

SHREVEPORT, La. (KSLA) - It has been one year since Louisiana banned kratom at the state level. The plant-derived supplement is used by many to treat pain but is outlawed in multiple states and heavily regulated in others. Critics say it can quickly become addictive, while supporters say it is the only way out of addiction for some.

A father’s account

John Hays described his son, Philip, as a musician who was close with his family.

“He was a musician. I guess you could say he loved music. And he was real close, real tight with his family. All of us, you know, his brothers, sisters, his mother, you know,” Hays said.

“Yeah, 30 years old. He had a good job. He was a good son. And he had his life,” Hays said.

Hays said Philip’s life was affected by pain sustained after a football injury. Philip turned from prescription opioids to kratom as an adult, hoping for a more natural source of relief. Hays said the supplement, a powder his son mixed into drinks, worked for Philip.

That access was cut off in 2025 when Louisiana outlawed kratom. Hays said that’s when Philip started to worry about his pain coming back.

“And he said, you know, what will I do? And he said, I don’t want to have withdrawals. And I said, we’ll do whatever we need to do. If you need to go to the doctor, we’ll take you to the doctor. If you need to go to a rehab or whatever, I’ll take you to the rehab,” Hays said.

Son’s death weeks after ban

Just a few weeks after the state banned kratom, Hays said his son got sicker. Philip turned down his father’s offers to take him to a doctor.

“Some reason I don’t know why I did not check on him. And I went on to work and I called my housekeeper and I said, hey, I said, I forgot to check on Philip, will you go check on him?” Hays said. “So she went in and checked on him and she called me back and she said, he’s not moving. I said, call the police department, call an ambulance. Call. I said, call somebody.”

By the time Hays rushed home, Philip was gone.

“I just lost it,” Hays said.

Investigators found several kilograms of kratom in Philip’s room when his body was removed. His father believes Philip bought hundreds of dollars worth of kratom in the weeks leading up to Louisiana’s ban, including several pounds on July 31, hours before the ban went into effect.

Law enforcement in Bossier Parish confirmed it wasn’t a crime to buy those products before the deadline.

Toxicology records showed Philip had alcohol and kratom in his system when he died.

How kratom affects the body

Pharmacologist Kevin Murnane said kratom affects everyone differently.

“And it really has very complex mixture of different effects. What it low doses of it do is very different from what higher doses do,” Murnane said.

“So if you take a very high dose of and you mix it with an opioid or with alcohol, that could be very dangerous because they’re both downers, they’re both going to sedate you. And that could get you from just, you know, being a little sleepy to much more dangerous levels of sedation that could really suppress your respiration and your ability to breathe,” Murnane said.

Louisiana’s kratom ban came as the country saw a surge in calls to poison control centers linked to the drug, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Federal data showed only a few hundred deaths linked to kratom overdoses between 2015 and 2025. The majority of those deaths involved polysubstance ingestion. Often in those cases, the person died with multiple drugs in their system, such as opioids or alcohol, along with kratom.

Patchwork of state laws

Eight states currently have full bans on kratom. Others have varying degrees of access, ranging from county-level bans to bans on specific kratom products like 7-OH, a concentrated form of kratom.

Two of the four states covered in the ArkLaTex have outlawed all kratom sales and possession as of 2025. Stores in Texas and Oklahoma are allowed to sell kratom to adults.

Sabrina Godwin has sold kratom in her shop since it opened in 2020.

“Most of the time they come in, they just want the powder and then they will add it to like their teas, their coffees, things like that for a booster in the day to help with pain,” Godwin said.

Godwin said providing a space for people to safely purchase kratom is important to her.

“They don’t want them on the streets, they don’t want it out of the black market. They’d rather go into a store and be able to purchase it and be okay with it, instead of getting their head blown off on the corner. I mean, let’s be real. It’s too dangerous out there,” Godwin said.

Godwin pulled her supply of 7-OH pills off the shelves at the end of July.

“We got word that the DEA will be they have intent on reclassifying 7-OH to a scheduled one. So in my mind that’s felony charges. And so yeah, I’ll have it off my shelves by August. I mean by the 31st of this month. So August 1st going forward I am compliant fully whether they have enacted it or not,” Godwin said.

Advocates and warnings

Mac Haddow, with the American Kratom Association, said when used correctly, kratom can help people wean off stronger drugs.

“Johns Hopkins University did a study on this of about 3000 addicts who reported using kratom to wean off of the opioid, and what the 87% reported that it relieved their withdrawal symptoms, which is the hardest challenge that an addict has is to get off of the opioid,” Haddow said.

Murnane said cutting back on kratom for people who rely on it needs to be done slowly and taken seriously.

“So it might control your pain for while you’re on it. But when you try to come back off, if you might have an exaggerated pain response, you might have withdrawal symptoms and very, very strong feelings of pains. And those sorts of dangerous psychiatric effects and medical effects can happen with long term use,” Murnane said.

Hays said he doesn’t want anyone else to experience what he or his son went through.

“This is right up there. I mean, it’s killing people. It’s very highly addictive. And it’s killing people,” Hays said.

Murnane said the evidence that kratom is addictive is strong, but said it is less addictive than stimulants or opioids.

“And I would say the evidence is pretty strong. The kratom is addictive, but it’s not as addictive as stimulants or opioids or other drugs. It’s probably less addictive than that, but it does carry some risk more than other drugs,” Murnane said.

Haddow said there is no known level of toxicity that would cause death from kratom alone.

“There is no known level of toxicity of that would cause a death,” Haddow said. “It needs to be responsibly consumed. We advocate for good manufacturing standards, for good labeling, standards for response used in age restrictions.”

Godwin said advocates worry a national ban on kratom would put more people at risk.

“It’s going to put a lot of people in the hospital. It’s going to put a lot of people in doctor’s cares or out there on the street. They’re going to be, people are going to have pain no matter what,” Godwin said.