‘Sinister Industry’: Kansas City Company Behind 7-OH & a Growing Opioid Epidemic

David Hudnall’s three-part series began with a billboard along the side of Interstate 35 that asked drivers if they were “ready to feel better.” The pitch was for 7-OH, an opioid derived from kratom, a plant from Southeast Asia. Both kratom and 7-OH fall into a class of “federally legal but largely unregulated” products, sold at gas stations and smoke shops. Hudnall, a food and business reporter for the Kansas City Star, finds the local drama—a feud between top officers at CBD American Shaman over the ethics of selling 7-OH—and follows the substance at its center to a private trade show in Las Vegas, where he’s surrounded by sellers looking for their share of a reportedly multi-billion-dollar industry. By part two, CBD American Shaman’s founder, tells Hudnell he is prepared to “go back to prison” over 7-OH. Hudnell’s subjects are as complicated as the products they pitch; you’ll read each part of this one, I bet.

This was the CHAMPS Trade Show, which functions as a kind of swap meet for buyers and sellers of legally iffy intoxicants typically found behind the counter at smoke shops and off-brand gas stations. It took over two floors of the convention center and was not open to the public.

The event is held multiple times per year. It is where an industry built on selling cheap highs in shadowy markets shifts to extrovert mode, exposing its underbelly beneath bright lights. CHAMPS is also a place to scout new trends, and in July one was impossible to miss: 7-hydroxymitragynine, better known as 7-OH, had taken over the show floor. Roughly half of the 400 vendors in attendance were selling some version of it.

An opioid born from kratom, 7-OH is considered by researchers to be far more powerful than morphine, with a correspondingly high potential for addiction. Two years ago, few people at CHAMPS had ever heard of 7-OH. Now a gold rush was underway. The biggest, gaudiest installations — more mini-nightclubs than trade-show booths, with LED walls, carpeted lounges, and young women in tight clothes — belonged to the companies hawking it.

“Sales are moving into the millions, and we haven’t even been in business for a year,” said HydroxyRx owner Ryan Lewis, who was wearing a naval veteran-style cap that said “USS Blackout – 48 Hour Bender” and selling 7-OH pills in packaging that looked like a box of Benadryl.