The Trump administration backed off a full ban on MGPI, a potent opioid compound found in some kratom products, and proposed allowing levels that HHS and the DEA have not found safe. A published New York Times investigation found the reversal followed industry lobbying and millions in Republican donations from a kratom executive whose company faces wrongful-death lawsuits. The administration says science drove the decision.
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In the ever-evolving world of plant-based medicine and supplements, few plants have faced as much scrutiny and controversy as kratom. Native to Southeast Asia and commonly marketed as an herbal supplement, the plant has become increasingly popular in the US, with millions of people using it every year. Yet despite its popularity, it remains controversial: no drug products containing kratom have been approved by the FDA, and the plant has faced several attempts at prohibition.
The question has become even more complicated in recent months. Federal health officials have repeatedly hinted at plans to prohibit potent opioids associated with kratom, only to reverse course in October 2026 and propose allowing certain concentrations of the substance in products marketed as “natural.” But a published New York Times investigation has raised questions about whether industry lobbying and political contributions may have played a role in the decision.
The compound at the center of the controversy is mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, or MGPI, a semi-synthetic opioid associated with kratom that has been found in laboratory testing to be substantially more powerful than morphine. Scientists are still working to understand exactly how it appears in products otherwise marketed as botanical kratom. According to DEA data cited by The New York Times, MGPI was detected in at least 56 overdose cases, 48 of which were fatal, between February 2025 and May 2026.
As recently as July, federal officials had described MGPI as an imminent threat to public safety. Back in 2016, the DEA had described kratom itself as having a “high potential for abuse” and reported deaths associated with its use. The Department of Health and Human Services, led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., had supported a ban on MGPI and two other compounds. But on October 9, Kennedy announced that the department had reviewed the evidence and was instead recommending exemptions for certain levels of MGPI, arguing that trace amounts may occur in otherwise natural products. Under the HHS recommendation, products would fall under Schedule I if 7-OH, MGPI or both combined exceed 1 milligram per gram in solids or 1 milligram per milliliter in liquids, or if they contain less than 100 times as much mitragynine, kratom’s main alkaloid, as those compounds, Becker’s Behavioral Health reported. The October action is a notice of intent: the DEA said a temporary scheduling order would be published on or after November 13, and the August temporary scheduling of MGPI and the two related compounds remains in effect until a new order is issued, according to the Federal Register notice and the FDA.
The administration maintains that the policy is aimed at highly concentrated and synthetic products rather than traditional botanical kratom. But the distinction has raised questions because the levels now proposed are considerably higher than the amounts researchers have found in the products they tested.
Amar Chittiboyina, a natural products chemist at the University of Mississippi whose research was cited by HHS, told The New York Times that his team detected MGPI at roughly two parts per million in tests of eight liquid kratom products. The new threshold, he said, could be as much as 500 times higher than those levels, calling it “too permissive.” He also noted that his study reported MGPI had been identified but did not list the amounts.
The controversy becomes even more complicated when politics enters the picture.
The Lobbying Question
The policy reversal followed a lobbying campaign by kratom companies and industry advocates against the proposed ban. One of the figures at the center of that effort, according to the Times, is David Gabbay, who manages a large kratom distribution company and is associated with a network of companies that sell O.P.M.S., a brand marketed as natural kratom.
Gabbay and his wife, Maya, have been major Republican donors, with their contributions reaching approximately $2.9 million by October 12, 2026, the Times reported. Mac Haddow, a spokesman for the American Kratom Association, an industry advocacy organization that the Times reported is funded by companies related to Gabbay and others, told the paper he went to the White House to make the industry’s case.
The Gabbays did not respond to the Times’ requests for comment. Gwendolyn Payton, a lawyer for the company Gabbay manages, told the paper that the couple donates to political candidates because they are advocates for kratom safety and for combating antisemitism, and said MGPI appeared in natural products in “very, very minor amounts.” Haddow said he was “very satisfied” with the new proposal and dismissed the idea that Gabbay’s contributions were a major factor, noting that others in the industry also donated and met with officials. “Everybody has to play on the same playing field,” he said, “and that’s all that’s happened here.”
The American Kratom Association has also disputed the Times’ account. In a letter to Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, announced October 30, the group demanded a substantial correction or a full retraction, arguing that the article failed to adequately explain that the proposal sets a single combined threshold for 7-OH and MGPI and adds an independent 100-to-1 alkaloid-ratio test. It also asked the Times to clarify that the October action is a notice of intent, not a final order. Haddow, the group’s senior fellow on public policy, said the Times “owes its readers a correction that explains what the DEA actually proposed.”
The administration rejects any link. “Neither litigation nor political contributions influenced H.H.S.’ recommendation,” HHS spokeswoman Emily Hilliard told the Times. White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster said the actions “were subject to rigorous scientific review and any assertion that they may be based in anything other than scientific evidence is completely false.”
The timing has drawn scrutiny because evidence of MGPI in products connected to several wrongful-death lawsuits involving Gabbay’s business interests came to light shortly after the proposed ban was announced.
In one of those cases, according to the Times, lawyers representing the family of Dustin Hernandez, a 29-year-old who died in 2021 after suffering a seizure while drinking kratom powder in tea during a night shift near Dallas, learned that a University of California, San Francisco lab had identified MGPI in the powder he had used. During a deposition, Marilyn Huestis, a retired National Institutes of Health toxicologist serving as an expert witness for Gabbay’s company and others, testified that the results, if correct, suggested the product had been “adulterated.” She later told the Times that trace amounts of MGPI can be found in botanical kratom, so an allowable threshold should be set. Payton has argued in court records that Hernandez’s death was caused by withdrawal from a benzodiazepine medication, and that the lab results should be excluded unless her team’s experts can test the same powder.
Additional laboratory reports cited by the plaintiffs’ lawyers identified MGPI in other O.P.M.S. extracts linked to Gabbay’s distribution network. One of those products, O.P.M.S. Black Liquid, had previously been associated with an FDA warning following a death and multiple reports of harm. According to court records cited by the Times, Josiah Berg, who died in 2023 at age 20, and Amandus Harrison, a Tennessee mother of six who died following a kratom overdose in 2024, had used the product before their deaths. The allegations in the lawsuits have not been resolved in court.
In a motion filed this month, the attorneys representing the families argue that the government’s new thresholds could complicate their cases by giving companies grounds to argue that products containing certain amounts of MGPI remain lawful and fall outside federal enforcement.
The White House Connection
The Times also pointed to the timing. On August 25, David and Maya Gabbay donated nearly $160,000 to the Republican National Committee, bringing their political contributions for the year to approximately $2.2 million.
That same day, the Justice Department announced the emergency temporary scheduling of MGPI and two other compounds (MGM-15 and MGM-16), placing them in Schedule I, the same as heroin, effective August 26. However, the department also said it would not pursue charges over incidental trace amounts of MGPI.
The following day, the American Kratom Association sued the DEA, asking the agency to permit some level of MGPI in products it characterized as otherwise natural kratom. Two companies that license O.P.M.S. products, New Hope Botanicals and Martian Sales, subsequently filed similar lawsuits in California and Wyoming and acknowledged that MGPI was in their products.
Haddow publicly described his conversations with the White House, on a podcast in September. “So we filed the lawsuit, and the White House has gotten involved, and the D.E.A., they came to us and said, ‘Look, we think we can resolve this problem,’” he said. “What they’ve assured us is that we’ll be happy with the outcome.”
Meanwhile, expert witnesses who earned $850 an hour working for Gabbay’s legal team sent letters urging policymakers to allow some MGPI to remain in otherwise botanical kratom, the Times reported. Letters were also sent by Dr. Rahul Gupta, who headed the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under President Joe Biden and suggested the MGPI level health officials ultimately adopted, and Jack Henningfield, who the Times reported previously worked for Purdue Pharma. Gupta told the paper that he sent the letter “in my own capacity” and was not paid by “any litigant, the American Kratom Association or any other industry organization.” Henningfield did not respond to the Times’ request for comment.
So How Much Is a ‘Trace’ Amount?
This is where the scientific disagreement becomes particularly important.
The federal government’s revised proposal acknowledges that “neither H.H.S. nor D.E.A. has made a finding that these substances are safe to use” at the levels it would allow. According to the senior author of a study cited by the administration, those levels are 25 to 500 times what is currently found on the market. At the same time, the administration argues that trace amounts of MGPI may occur in botanical products and that enforcement should focus on products deliberately manufactured to contain high concentrations of potent synthetic compounds.
But critics say that distinction does not resolve the underlying safety problem.
Dr. Andrew Kolodny, medical director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis University, reviewed HHS’s justification for revising the proposed ban. “They’re not doing this because the science supports it,” he told the Times. “They’re doing this because the industry and the lobbyists are basically writing the policy.”
The concern is not simply whether MGPI can be detected naturally. It is whether regulators know enough about the compound to establish a safe threshold for human consumption.
That question remains unanswered. Huestis, the defense expert, testified that the toxic dose of MGPI in humans is not known, and federal regulators have not determined that the proposed concentrations are safe.
At the same time, the American Kratom Association, which sued the DEA over the issue, has argued that some level of MGPI should be allowed in what it describes as otherwise natural kratom products. Haddow said he raised concerns with officials that felony charges could be brought against people possessing or manufacturing kratom with trace amounts of MGPI, according to the Times.
A Debate That Goes Beyond Kratom
The dispute reflects a broader problem facing the kratom market. The plant itself has been used for years in products marketed for everything from energy and pain relief to wellness, while more concentrated derivatives have increasingly entered the market.
Federal officials have sought to distinguish traditional kratom from these newer, more potent products. The administration says its objective is to remove dangerous synthetic and highly concentrated compounds from store shelves rather than prohibit botanical kratom outright.
But critics argue that exempting certain levels of MGPI from Schedule I controls without sufficient toxicological data could create a dangerous precedent.
The debate is also playing out at the state level, where lawmakers in several parts of the US have been enacting restrictions on kratom powders and concentrated derivatives for years, and many states are now debating bans. Surrogates for the kratom industry have downplayed the risks, the Times reported, contradicting the Food and Drug Administration.
For families involved in wrongful-death litigation, however, the question is much more immediate. They argue that products marketed as natural may contain powerful opioid compounds that consumers may not know they are taking.
The Trump administration insists that its decision is grounded in science, while critics see the reversal as evidence that political pressure and industry lobbying may have influenced a public-health decision.
For now, the central question remains unresolved: the federal government is proposing to exempt certain levels of a highly potent opioid from Schedule I controls without having determined that those levels are safe.
Whether the proposed policy ultimately protects the traditional kratom market, creates new risks, or reflects the influence of an increasingly organized industry remains to be seen.
Cover photo: Psychonaught, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
