Meet kratom, the drug cops call ‘gas station heroin’
From our US edition
You could visit a gas station every day and never realize that, alongside the candy and the disposable vapes, it was selling kratom, a potentially lethal drug. Kratom looks normal – just another herbal pick-me-up. It is sold as tablets, gummies and in little bottles of "tonic," with names such as "Kraken" and "Happy Hippo." But I’m a police officer in Charleston, South Carolina. And in my line of work, we call it "gas station heroin." I tend to finish a 12-hour shift, in the early morning, on the side of a highway in a gas station among the longleaf pines and chirping crickets. And I see a lot of kratom. It comes from the leaves of a Southeast Asian tree, and its active chemicals act on the brain’s opioid receptors.
