ICYMI: “Grassley Targeted the Kratom Killing our Kids”

Grassley targeted the kratom killing our kids By Wendy Chamberlain November 9, 2026 The Cedar Rapids Gazette ‘Kratom is killing our kids." Sen. Chuck Grassley posted those words in October, and then did something about it. He led a letter , joined by Sens. Mike Lee and Susan Collins, urging the DEA and FDA to finish the emergency scheduling of a kratom compound called 7-OH and to begin permanently scheduling the whole kratom plant. He gave the agencies a deadline to answer in writing. Those are the words every parent who has buried a child to kratom has been hoping to hear from Washington. My son Joe was 38 when he sat down in his recliner to watch TV, drifted off to sleep and never woke up. He was my only child and a father to three boys. His toxicology report listed one cause of death: mitragynine toxicity. Mitragynine is the main drug in kratom. It was the only substance in his body. Joe started taking kratom because he was told it was a natural, healthy pick-me-up. It hooked him the way opioids hook people. Kratom works on the same receptors in the brain as heroin and morphine. People who try to quit go through withdrawal. Some never wake up. Grassley's letter says what families like mine have been saying at city halls and statehouses for years. He and his colleagues wrote they "worry the availability of these products is providing consumers with a false sense of security because they are readily available and marketed as 'natural.'" The senators put numbers on the record. Poison control centers received 3,434 kratom exposure reports in 2025, roughly 1,200 percent more than a decade ago. Emergency crews logged 3,672 suspected nonfatal kratom overdoses across 38 states in just over three years. The FDA has told consumers not to use kratom at all. And the DEA has found that some semi-synthetic compounds sold in kratom-labeled products are more potent than morphine. Iowa has confirmed 45 kratom-associated deaths since 2024, across 23 counties, with 16 of them in the first seven months of this year. Iowa Poison Control calls about kratom are up 467 percent in two years. A ban passed the Iowa House. The industry behind kratom runs a powerful lobbying operation that fights hard against anyone who opposes it. Grassley has spent his career taking on people who thought they were too big to be questioned on behalf of families who have no lobbyist at all. For a mother who lost her only child to a product sold next to the gum, that means more than I can say. When the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee puts his name on a letter like this, every grieving parent in the country knows we are not making this up, and every agency knows someone with real authority is watching. Iowans should keep an eye on what the DEA and FDA do next. The agencies still have to act. I can't bring Joe back. His boys are growing up without him. But for the first time in a long time, someone in Washington said out loud what killed my son. Thank you, Sen. Grassley. Wendy Chamberlain is the founder of Kratom Danger Awareness. Her son, Joe, died of mitragynine toxicity in 2020. -30-