AUSTIN, Texas (KTRK) — When Rae Heath stops at a gas station to refuel during long bike rides, she said she always notices the colorful products by the register.
“I walk up to the counter, and I just look at what they have, and I don’t say anything to the guy at the counter,” Heath said.
But Heath actually has a lot to say.
The colorful packages lined up right next to the cash register are the reason her son isn’t coming home.
Jonas Heath, a 19-year-old music major at Oklahoma State University with dreams of playing in an orchestra pit, died in April of what federal health officials are calling “gas station heroin.”
“I spoke to him on my birthday,” his mom said. “He just sounded really out of it.”
According to his autopsy, Jonas died of toxicity caused by 7-Hydromitragynine (7-OH), kratom and a derivative of 7-OH.
Kratom is a plant native to Southeast Asia and in small doses can help someone focus, but in large doses can act as a sedative, said Wendell Campbell, a drug intelligence officer at the Houston High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.
Trace amounts of 7-OH occur naturally in dried kratom, but now chemical labs are synthetically mass-producing it into concentrated tablets, drinks, and vapes.
The Food and Drug Administration warns that 7-OH is up to 13 times more potent than morphine.
“It’s something that an individual can develop a dependency on pretty quickly,” Campbell said. “When you develop that opioid use disorder or dependency to 7-OH, you just got to have it every day.”
While Narcan, a life-saving medicine known to rapidly reverse opioid overdoses, has been effective for drugs like fentanyl, Campbell said it now takes four to six doses of Narcan to reverse a single 7-OH overdose.
13 Investigates found kratom and 7-OH-related deaths have increased since the state first started tracking it.
In 2017, the Texas Department of State Health Services recorded 14 fatalities due to kratom and 7-OH.
By 2023, when concentrated 7-OH products flooded the market, state data shows 114 fatalities.
So far this year, from January through the end of August, Texas has already counted 111 kratom- and 7-OH-related deaths.
A graphic released by the FDA explicitly charts 7-OH as the next rising wave in the opioid epidemic after prescription pills, heroin, and more recently, fentanyl.
With 7-OH, the window between first use and death or potential overdose can be quick.
From what Heath has pieced together, she believes her son started taking kratom and progressed to 7-OH less than two months before he died.
“This is not in the same realm of kids that experiment with pot and THC. This is something completely different and much more deadly,” she said.
Heath turned her grief into advocacy and launched the nonprofit 7-OH Truth Project last month to educate others.
She is also talking with Texas lawmakers about a bill to criminalize the drug.
The bill, which she expects to be filed during the upcoming legislative session, would classify kratom extracts and synthetic 7-OH as Schedule I controlled substances, slap manufacturers and unauthorized sellers with felony charges, invoke civil penalties and require mandatory overdose reporting.
“If this saves another 19-year-old boy, another 17-year-old girl from the same fate, then I just think it’s such a meaningful, meaningful thing,” Heath said.
In Texas, products with more than a 2% concentration of 7-OH already violate state law, but weak enforcement has kept the product accessible.
In April, the Texas Attorney General filed a lawsuit against two California-based online kratom retailers for selling products that contain between 86 and 96% of the alkaloid content in 7-OH that is supposed to be capped at two percent.
Other states have proved targeted enforcement works.
California authorities took action last year after Los Angeles County recorded 10 local 7-OH overdose deaths from 2025 to early 2026.
“We were alerted by our medical examiner that we were seeing overdose cases involving 7-OH that seemed to be where 7-OH was the cause of the overdose event, and so we quickly put out health alerts, we made sure the community was aware and then we exercised part of the California law that allowed us to go into facilities and run inspections where we looked for 7-OH in kratom products and directed retailers removed them from shelves,” said Dr. Brian Hurley, interim director and medical director of the Bureau of Substance Abuse Prevention and Control in the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
Hurley said they conducted 5,000 inspections countywide and identified and removed kratom products from nearly 500 locations.
Since that enforcement action started, Hurley said Los Angeles County hasn’t recorded any more 7-OH-related deaths.
“We did see a direct line, or a timing, between when we took these enforcement actions and when we see a drop in 7-OH overdoses, so that would be a lesson I would want other jurisdictions to consider,” Hurley said.
Tragedies tied to 7-OH continue making national headlines.
Famed music producer Tay Keith was found dead in his Nashville apartment in June, according to ABC News. The network reports that, based on his autopsy, he died from a mix of drugs, including 7-OH. There were no other drugs in his system, according to his toxicology report.
Last month, two University of Mississippi students were found dead on the same day. Federal prosecutors subsequently arrested a local smoke shop owner and his son for allegedly supplying the students with the drug.
The arrests show a level of accountability that Heath wants enacted in Texas law.
A bill was proposed in the Texas Senate during the last legislative session in 2025 with similar goals related to kratom and 7-OH, but it didn’t pass.
When it comes to tackling addictive drugs in the community, Mike McDaniel, executive director of the Houston High Intensity Drug Tracking Area, said law enforcement officials can’t do it alone.
What I could assure you about Houston, Texas and our region is that we are very unified in our approach.
Mike McDaniel, executive director of Houston HIDTA
He said whether it’s on the federal level or the state level, he’s optimistic there will be some positive changes soon when it comes to addressing this wave of 7-OH deaths.
“That’s why we’re partnering with treatment addiction professionals, the (Medical Examiner’s) office,” McDaniel said. “What I could assure you about Houston, Texas, and our region is that we are very unified in our approach.”
This week, the U.S. Department of Justice has already filed an emergency action and notice of intent to make 7-OH a Schedule I drug, which would put it in the same classification as drugs like heroin and LSD.
Lawmakers can start filing bills in November for next year’s session, and Heath plans to be at the Capitol to fight for Jonas’s Law.
“I would do anything to have Jonas back, bar none, of course, but if this law gets passed and this stuff is banned, at least his life will have done something good for others,” Heath said.
This story comes from our news partner ABC13 Houston.