RFK Jr. Thinks He Saved Thousands of Lives. But It May Have Been 7-OH
/By Crystal Lindell
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently claimed during a press conference that the Trump administration has saved tens of thousands of American lives.
He said opioid overdoses were down by 30% and the number of opioid prescriptions were cut in half, yet the news media was ignoring it..
“We have saved 20,000 lives,” RFK Jr. said. “What we’re doing in our various programs is working, and it’s working for the American public. It’s another fantastic accomplishment by the Trump administration that everybody said could not happen. But it’s getting done and nobody’s covering it.”
As someone who’s on the ground in the rural Midwest, where overdose deaths have ravaged the region, I’m here to report the truth: In my observations, RFK Jr. hasn’t saved any lives, but legal 7-hydromitragynine (7-OH) has.
I can’t prove it scientifically, but I can tell you what I have witnessed. Former fentanyl users suddenly thrived when they started taking the concentrated kratom alkaloid.
Of course, the most depressing part about all of this is that it’s RFK Jr. who’s leading the push to make 7-OH illegal. He has played a major role in getting the DEA to make 7-OH an illegal Schedule One drug, which could happen any day now.
When the plan was first announced, Kennedy said: “We’re taking action on 7-OH as a critical step in the fight against opioid addiction. We will protect the health of our nation’s youth as we advance our mission to Make America Healthy Again.”
But it’s 7-OH that has been doing a lot of the heavy lifting in fighting opioid addiction. Many long-time opioid addicts have turned to it to stabilize their lives.
Overdose deaths actually started declining in 2023, two years before President Trump’s second term began, and opioid prescriptions were falling long before that. And yes, we’ve covered that ad nauseam.
7-OH Saves Lives
Coincidentally, 2023 is the same year that 7-OH products first became widely available.
“There's probably roughly 75,000 people walking the earth today that wouldn't be here, and hundreds of thousands of others that have used 7-OH to completely stop taking a street drug,” American Shaman founder and 7-OH producer Vince Sanders told PNN nearly a year ago.
I fully expect overdose deaths to start creeping back up when the 7-OH ban goes into effect. To put it bluntly: people are going to die because of RFK Jr.’s actions.
The need for effective pain relief won’t just go away, but will shift into more dangerous territory, like street fentanyl, as a public policy think tank recently warned.
Here’s the real truth about 7-OH from someone who uses it to treat debilitating chronic pain: It has been a godsend. Aside from the fact that it’s actually effective at treating pain, it’s also a partial agonist at the mu-opioid receptor, which gives it a ceiling effect that helps people naturally limit their dose.
Best of all, unlike actual opioids, 7-OH does not cause respiratory depression – which means people don’t die when they take it. That’s why we haven’t seen a bunch of overdoses blamed solely on 7-OH. After all, if 7-OH was actually causing deaths, we’d see bodies in the streets given how accessible it is. Or was, depending on where you live.
Plus, because it has remained legal in most states, 7-OH has helped people who used to rely on street drugs stabilize their lives. I have seen it first-hand among loved ones who have been more stable and healthy than they have been in years.
No more spending all day trying to get in touch with a shady drug dealer who could be selling you crushed Benadryl. They could simply go to a smoke shop, buy a trusted 7-OH brand, and expect about the same level of effectiveness as the last time they purchased it.
My fiancé went to high school here in the rural Midwest, and has lost countless friends to overdoses. So many have died, that it’s hard to remember the full list of their names.
But something magical happened over the last couple years. People stopped dying of ODs. The last one we heard about was in July 2024.
Now that we are in the final days of legal 7-OH, I’m seeing a big push in the news media and by addiction treatment providers urging people to use Suboxone to get off 7-OH. That’s like pushing people to use cocaine to get off coffee. It’s absurd and dangerous, and will just lead to users developing a significantly worse opioid addiction.
There’s a lot of advocacy around 7-OH where users plead with the general public to get them to understand just how helpful it’s been to chronic pain patients, people with opioid addiction, and military veterans.
I think there’s a major flaw in that approach though. The problem is that many people don’t care about those groups. They think people should just suck it up if they have chronic pain, and they take sick pleasure in seeing opioid addicts suffer through withdrawal. .
But there’s a saying about disability, and by extension chronic pain: “It’s the only minority group you can join at any time.” You never know when you could get in a car accident, or fall in love with a veteran, or watch your child develop opioid addiction.
And when those things happen, you will be desperate to find the safe and effective relief that 7-OH offers. But it will likely be too late, because the Trump administration will have already made it a Schedule One drug.
I want to end this column with some practical advice for any 7-OH users who may be forced to stop using it over the next week: TAPER!
I am not a doctor but I have tapered off 7-OH myself. If you taper down slowly, taking a little less every day, for many users the withdrawal symptoms are almost zero. When you get to a very low dose, start working in coffee and kratom powder to ease the transition even more.
Losing legal 7-OH is going to be devastating for a lot of people, and it’s going to lead to more overdoses. And when that happens, RFK Jr. – a former heroin user himself – won’t be attending any of the funerals offering condolences, or taking credit for the needless deaths.
