Naperville commission votes in favor of ban on kratom products
The Naperville Liquor Commission wants the city to ban the sale of all kratom products.
Naperville already restricts the sale of kratom to anyone under the age of 21 and prohibits its possession by anyone under the age of 18.
But the commission voted Thursday, July 9, to recommend that the city council take a stronger stance in the wake of health experts raising concerns about new synthetic variations of the drug, which are producing a stronger, more opioid-like effect.
Kratom is a tropical tree native to Southeast Asia. Its leaves, which contain two major psychoactive ingredients called mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH), can be brewed in teas, smoked or used as gel capsules.
Winnetka, Plainfield and Bloomington are among the towns that have voted to ban the sale of kratom products, while Rockford has prohibited the sale of synthetic kratom products. Illinois lawmakers have also proposed stricter regulations.
“In the last five years, 7-OH has really become a popular derivative that’s being sold in a lot of these smoke shops,” said Ariel Bernstein, a clinical supervisor for Endeavor Behavioral Health in Naperville. “It is 10 times more powerful than the classic mitragynine that’s the primary psychoactive ingredient in kratom, and then more recently, there’s even more derivatives.”
Federal officials have also taken note. Earlier this month, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration announced a temporary ban on products containing certain synthetic variations of kratom. The DEA is reclassifying certain thresholds of 7-OH and three related substances as Schedule I, meaning the drug has no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. The reclassification will take effect in August and will be in place for two years.
“Six years (after this was initially discussed), we’re here revisiting the issue because over the past several months, I’ve heard from members of the community about the impact that kratom has had on their lives with their families and their friends,” Mayor Scott Wehrli said at Thursday’s commission meeting.
Naperville resident Ashley Ware was one of those community members who shared her story with the commission.
The 38-year-old mother of four first learned about kratom in 2022 from a health and wellness podcast. It was marketed as an alcohol substitute and a mood enhancer, and she started consuming it after seeing advertisements on Instagram, she said.
“For me, it worked as a stimulant,” Ware said. “It gave me the energy that I wanted. I thought it was literally like drinking a coffee. I didn’t realize what kratom was. I had no idea. I took it for two years, and throughout those two years, I had significant physical and mental health issues. The physical ones were my skin started to turn green. I got really, really thin. … My digestive system was a mess.”
It got to a point where she said she could not go a day without drinking it. One bottle a day of Feel Free eventually turned into five, causing her to experience heart issues.
“I really thought this drink was going to kill me,” she said.
Ware eventually checked herself into Edward Hospital’s detox unit and started her road to recovery. She experienced withdrawals during her time in recovery, and hospital staff were initially unsure of how to help her since they had never heard of Feel Free, she said. She has now been sober for about 15 months.
Health and addiction experts Thursday said that Ware’s experience was similar to what they have witnessed in their own work.
“As Ashley powerfully illustrated, clinicians are still learning how to address this new and insidious substance use disorder,” said Alex Pochron, a social worker at the Fox Valley Institute. “The research is scant. There is no FDA-approved medication.”
In the 18 months Pochron spent working in an intensive outpatient program, she did not see a single successful completion of kratom use disorder.
Bernstein said the program he works for typically has somewhere between 20 to 40 patients. Usually, about 10% to 28% of those patients are struggling with kratom substance use disorder. He also noted that the DuPage County Health Department reported six overdoses involving kratom products last year.
National data also suggests that an increasing number of people are using kratom, according to Natasha Grover of 360 Youth Services. U.S. poison centers documented 14,449 kratom exposures from 2015 to 2025. Last year saw 3,434 exposures, an increase of 1,200% from the 258 reported in 2015, data shows.
While some speakers Thursday advocated for a ban on kratom products, the Global Kratom Coalition wrote a letter to the commission advocating against a complete ban.
“Rather than treating all products sold under the kratom label the same, Naperville can focus its efforts on the products the DEA has now identified as posing an imminent hazard to public safety,” wrote Allison Smith, global affairs director for the coalition.
However, the comment was not enough to change the minds of commissioners, who unanimously voted in favor of recommending the city council adopt the ban.
“I’ve heard from family members, including members of our police department, about cases that we worked in just the last couple months, where there were overdoses … it’s really a scary health risk for our community,” Wehrli said. “I think there’s immediate action that we can take in our city to protect our residents.”