JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Patti Wheeler had never heard of kratom until she found her 27-year-old son using it — just weeks before he died.
“He said, ‘Oh, it’s kratom, mom, and it’s fine. It’s just an herbal supplement,’” Wheeler recalled. But the packaging gave her pause. “It looked really like a legitimate herbal supplement,” she said.
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Robert “Wyatt” Wheeler died Oct. 25, 2022, after taking kratom. His twin brother, Gannon, found him in their Texas home, suffering a seizure.
Now, his mother is on a mission to make sure other families don’t get the same phone call she did.
What is kratom — and why is it so easy to get?
Kratom is derived from a tree native to Southeast Asia. The compounds in its leaves can have a stimulant or sedative effect on the human body, depending on the dosage used. People take kratom for many reasons: to ease pain, anxiety and depression. Some use it to help withdraw from opioids. Wyatt Wheeler was using it as a substitute for alcohol, his mother said.
Getting kratom is easy. It’s sold at gas stations, smoke shops and online to anyone 21 and older.
Over the years, suppliers have concentrated kratom’s potency significantly. Two of the plant’s psychoactive compounds — mitragynine and 7-hydroxy-mitragynine, known as 7-OH — have been hyper-concentrated and, according to medical experts, are now highly addictive.
“Once they found out that it was really psychoactive and it could be very inexpensively extracted and then boosted synthetically, it became the big product — and it’s beautifully marketed,” said Susan Pitman, founder of the drug prevention group Drug Free Duval. “You can see things that say ‘stress-releaser,’ ‘sleep well.’ There are tinctures, there are pills.”
Pitman founded Drug Free Duval nearly 20 years ago. She calls kratom “a really sneaky and dangerous substance.”
Florida deaths linked to kratom compound
No federal agency fully regulates kratom, which means consumers may not understand how much they’re taking or how it could interact with other medications.
According to records obtained by the News4JAX I-Team from the Florida Medical Examiner’s Commission, 131 people died in Florida in 2024 because of mitragynine — a kratom compound. Another 93 people had it in their bodies at the time of death. The 2024 report is the most recent on file.
Last year, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier declared an emergency authorization calling for penalties if suppliers and merchandisers did not properly label kratom products. That emergency action expires at the end of June.
A mother, a documentary and a call to ban kratom
Out of her grief, Wheeler created a documentary — “Kratom: Side Effects May Include” — that tells the stories of those who have died, examines key players in the kratom industry and looks at regulatory gaps surrounding the plant.
The film premieres in Jacksonville this Saturday night. Tickets are available at Ticketmaster.com .
Wheeler wants Florida to go further than labeling requirements. She wants a full ban on all kratom products.
“Anybody who’s making an argument for kratom is either addicted, a user, they’re in opioid withdrawal, they have pain — real pain — or anxiety,” Wheeler said. “Every one of these things I’m listing are medical issues. They’re not something that you go and buy in a gas station.”
The other side: kratom advocates push back
Not everyone agrees. Mac Haddow, who represents the American Kratom Association, says the plant has real benefits.
“Veterans, law enforcement officials love this because it helps them manage acute and chronic pain,” Haddow said. He uses it, too, to deal with chronic pain.
Haddow and Wheeler do share at least one position: both want synthetic kratom products, specifically 7-OH, banned.
The DEA has listed kratom as a Drug and Chemical of Concern and says people who become addicted can experience psychosis.
Six states have banned kratom products. The nearest state to Florida is Alabama. Within Florida, Sarasota County is the only county to have banned all kratom products.
Wheeler says she can’t stay silent — and recognizes banning kratom will cause withdrawal symptoms for dependent and addicted users.
“I don’t want to be the person that creates pain for someone,” she said. “But I also can’t stand by and not be a voice that might save them.”
She wishes someone had been that voice for her and her son, before Wyatt’s untimely death at the age of 27.
“All that raw talent is gone because he walked into a gas station or a vape store and he bought something off the shelf,” Wheeler said. “It is just unfathomable.”