Suffolk County is set to ban the psychoactive herbal extract kratom — aka “gas station heroin” — but a proposed law would exempt sales of the actual plant.
County lawmakers tweaked a proposed law so that it targets synthetic pills, capsules and liquid vials known to be sold in gas stations while allowing sale of leaves of kratom.
“I’m not in favor of an all-out ban,” the bill’s sponsor and Deputy Presiding officer James Mazzarella said at Tuesday’s county legislature meeting.
“But there are so many chemicals, alkaloids, and other substances that we’re finding in the market being sold along with kratom — so this legislature has to take a stand, it’s just a matter of how we get to that point,” Mazzarella added.
The county’s rewrite of the bill is now almost identical to similar state legislation passed earlier this month to ban a synthetic kratom derivative known as 7-hydroxymitragynine, or 7-OH, Gov. Kathy Hochul hasn’t yet signed the bill into law.
But Suffolk lawmakers said they don’t want to wait for the state to take action in case of any delays, and their bill even goes a step further by expanding on the state’s definition to also prohibit kratom in pill, capsule or liquid vial form — which Presiding Officer Anthony Piccirillo jokingly called “gas station heroin.”
The FDA has warned kratom has never been approved by the agency, can produce opioid-like effects, and cause addiction, liver damage, nausea and seizures, even as it’s widely marketed as an energy booster and pain reliever.
Suffolk already bars anyone under the age of 21 from purchasing the substance, but neighboring Nassau County has banned its sale outright.
Tuesday’s legislative session marked the fourth public hearing on the matter, with the record remaining open through the legislature’s next meeting on July 14, when they may approve the bill and make it law.