The US Drug Enforcement Administration is waging what critics describe as a “scorched-earth campaign” against a growing class of obscure opioid compounds, raising questions about the agency’s expanding use of emergency scheduling powers and the potential consequences for drug research and policy.
The latest targets include a collection of little-known kratom alkaloids and synthetic opioid modulators that, unlike fentanyl and other widely-recognised opioids driving overdose deaths, remain largely unknown outside specialist circles.
The controversy centers in part on the DEA’s move to place compounds including Mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, MGM-15 and MGM-16 into Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. Critics argue that the agency is using emergency scheduling authority to prohibit substances without establishing that they pose an actual imminent threat to public safety.
“The DEA’s temporary scheduling of mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, MGM-15, and MGM-16 illustrates why emergency drug-scheduling power is troubling,” attorney Robert Rush of the Rights and Reason Project wrote in a LinkedIn post.
“Here, the DEA repeatedly relies on guilt by association, extrapolating similarity to 7-OH, evidence concerning kratom generally (which it is not banning), and predictions,” Rush wrote.
He points specifically to the DEA’s rationale for scheduling MGM-16, noting that the agency acknowledges that there is “no evidence” supporting the compound’s presence on the consumer market while simultaneously arguing that it could potentially emerge as an illicit substitute.
In other words, the government is not necessarily responding to an existing public-health crisis involving MGM-16. Critics argue that it is attempting to pre-empt a hypothetical one.
“This matters because § 811(h) is an extraordinary delegation of governmental power,” Rush wrote.
“DEA can effectively create a new federal felony prohibition, immediately impose Schedule I restrictions on scientific research, bypass ordinary notice-and-comment and hearing procedures, and then declare that its temporary scheduling decision ‘is not subject to judicial review.’”
“Emergency administrative authority must address actual emergencies and not become a shortcut around due process,” he concluded.
The dispute has attracted a growing coalition of anti-prohibition advocates, researchers and people working in the ethnobotanical industry who argue that the DEA’s approach could have consequences extending well beyond kratom.
Among the most vocal critics is Soren Shade of Top Tree Herbs, who has been challenging the DEA’s actions while highlighting a particularly obscure compound that could become collateral damage in the agency’s expanding campaign: SR-17018.
“The DEA has taken to the Federal Register to publish their intent to schedule a number of these opioid modulators,” Shade told TalkingDrugs.
“This is where drugs go to die. This is how drugs are made illegal.”
The case of SR-17018
SR-17018 is almost entirely unknown to the general public. Unlike 7-OH, which has developed a growing consumer market, SR-17018 is primarily an obscure research compound.
“So far, this remarkable compound has been studied in rodent models extensively, and in one primate study; it’s not been formally studied in humans,” he said.
Shade points to research conducted by scientists working under Dr. Laura Bohn, whom he describes as a leading opioid researcher and the inventor and patent holder associated with the compound.
The research, he argues, suggests that SR-17018 could behave very differently from traditional opioids.
“Over time, classical opioids like morphine, [oxycodone], fentanyl, and heroin become less effective and you have to take more of them. And that’s when you start to see these outcomes, that the more negative side of these compounds, the long term use. What we’re seeing with our SR-17018 in rodent models is sort of the exact opposite.”
According to Shade, animal studies have not demonstrated the same development of tolerance associated with traditional opioids.
“There is no tolerance built up over time,” he said. “The pain killing effect, the nociceptive effect, is steady at a steady dose over time.”
He also points to research suggesting that SR-17018 may be capable of substituting for traditional opioids while altering opioid tolerance.
“When transitioning from a classical opiates like morphine or OxyContin to SR-17018, it substitutes for it, and it also sensitises one’s tolerance so that after a period of time taking SR- 17018, the rodents saw increased painkilling effects from the classic opioids.”
These findings remain preclinical. There is no basis in the material here to characterise SR-17018 as an established human treatment, and the absence of human clinical trials is an important caveat to any discussion of its potential.
But that is precisely what makes its inclusion in the broader scheduling crackdown so controversial to advocates. Why prohibit a molecule whose potential therapeutic applications have not yet been fully explored?
The prohibition paradox
For Shade, the controversy surrounding SR-17018 is ultimately about much more than one molecule. He sees it as another iteration of a centuries-old cycle in which prohibition removes desirable drugs from legitimate markets without eliminating demand for their effects.
“These are things that once this drug sort of inevitably escaped from the lab, which is what all drugs do in the context of prohibition,” he said.
“Desirable drug number one, opium, was removed from the market hundreds of years ago, and since then it has just been a constant remaking of the effects that we desire from opium in order to satisfy this demand of reduced pain and euphoria.”
From this perspective, banning one compound simply creates an incentive to develop another.
That cycle has played out repeatedly through history and across substances: a substance is restricted, consumers seek alternatives, chemists develop analogues, and regulators subsequently attempt to prohibit those analogues.
Shade argues that SR-17018 represents a particularly interesting example because of its potential to address some of the problems associated with traditional opioids rather than simply reproducing their effects.
Yet, according to him, the DEA is moving to prohibit the compound without establishing a compelling public-health rationale.
“And it is being scheduled for zero rationale,” he said. “The DEA, in their scheduling notice, provides zero evidence for public harm or potential for abuse or anything coming from SR-17018.”
The underlying question is whether the government should be able to prohibit a molecule because it might eventually become problematic, rather than because evidence demonstrates that it already is.
“This is sort of like the goal of prohibitionists and the government of the DEA,” Shade said. “It’s to always create this dichotomy of a good drug versus a bad drug. A drug that is good for you, that you will benefit from is the one that should stay legal.”
When prevention becomes prohibition
The distinction matters because Schedule I status doesn’t merely prohibit recreational consumption. It can also dramatically complicate scientific research.
A compound placed into Schedule I is subject to the most restrictive federal controls, potentially making research more difficult, expensive and time-consuming. That is particularly consequential for compounds whose primary existence is in laboratories rather than on the street.
At the same time that pharmaceutical companies, researchers and policymakers are exploring novel compounds targeting the opioid system—and governments are increasingly embracing research into psychedelics such as ibogaine, MDMA and psilocybin—the federal government is moving aggressively against obscure compounds that have received comparatively little public attention.
The result is a strange new chapter in the War on Drugs in which the distinction between a dangerous illicit drug and a potentially promising research molecule becomes increasingly difficult to draw.
From kratom to political advocacy
The consequences are already being felt by businesses operating in the broader ethnobotanical ecosystem.
Robert Lattig, owner of Healing Herbals and a kratom industry expert, says the recent wave of proposed prohibitions has pushed him deeper into political advocacy.
“7-OH has its place as a harm reduction tool for people trying to get off of fentanyl and such, but the rise of the 7-OH industry has definitely tarnished the kratom industry — especially in regards to the many more casual kratom users,” he says.
“The blanket ban of certain substances adjacent to kratom as well as threats towards kratom itself has forced me as a business operator to become more involved in local politics and advocacy, which I encourage anyone who is connected to these spaces to also do.”
That shift—from selling ethnobotanical products to lobbying politicians—illustrates how quickly changes in federal drug policy can reshape entire industries.
If a compound can be scheduled because regulators believe it could become a substitute for another substance, the potential universe of prohibited molecules becomes enormous.
“The result of prohibition,” Shade said, “is all of this and you don’t ever get rid of the public harms. It just increases public harm.”
He argues that the DEA’s current campaign could ultimately reproduce the very conditions it is ostensibly trying to prevent.
“One of the most disastrous likely outcomes of the current scorched earth campaign that the DEA [is] waging against synthetic opioids is that one, these opioids are very, very safe,” he said. “And if you’re going to keep rolling the dice to create analogs, as we have been since opium was prohibited, we should stop here because these are not killing people.”
Whether SR-17018 ultimately proves to be a breakthrough in opioid pharmacology or a scientific dead end remains to be determined. The research is still overwhelmingly preclinical, and claims about its therapeutic potential will ultimately need to survive human trials.
But that is precisely the point its critics are making. A molecule does not have to be a miracle drug to warrant being studied. With the global drug war entering a new phase of analogues of synthetic drugs (particularly opioids) in greater circulation, the fight over molecules like SR-17018 may become a test of whether prohibition can coexist with scientific exploration.
