Fox News Host Laura Ingraham Calls for a Ban on Kratom, Criticizes Trump Admin for Waffling on the Issue
Laura Ingraham called for a kratom ban on Fox News after two Ole Miss student deaths. Dr. Drew Pinsky said high-THC weed may be as dangerous.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham called for a nationwide kratom ban on Wednesday night, days after packaged kratom turned up in the investigations into the deaths of two University of Mississippi students.
“This has got to be banned,” Ingraham said on The Ingraham Angle. “This should not be allowed to be sold in the United States.”
She also took aim at the White House. “Two years ago, the FDA warned people not to use it, but the Trump administration has kind of waffled here, even floating approval for some kratom derivatives,” she said. “Big mistake.”
Ingraham was pointing to President Trump’s comments in May. “We’re looking very seriously at natural 7-OH and getting that approved,” Trump said, according to STAT. In July, the DEA moved to temporarily schedule synthetic 7-OH but stopped short of a kratom ban. Mitragynine, the main active compound in natural kratom, stayed on store shelves.
Kratom found in two Ole Miss death investigations
Authorities discovered the two Ole Miss students Monday, one on campus and one in the city of Oxford, NBC News reported. Lafayette County Metro Narcotics said investigators recovered packaged kratom from a retail store in both cases.
Authorities have not confirmed that kratom or any other substance contributed to either death. Toxicology results are still pending. Still, the deaths have fueled fresh calls for a kratom ban.
“And it’s still legal in the state of Mississippi,” Ingraham said. “All we need is more kids addicted to more crap that turns them into zombies.”
Dr. Drew Pinsky: kratom is “a weak opiate”
Ingraham’s guest, addiction medicine specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky, did not mince words. “It is a weak opiate. We do not sell opiates at the drug store over the counter,” he said. “It is the same addictive potential as Vicodin or any other opiate. You just have to take a little more of it.”
Pinsky said concentrated 7-OH products are “worse than kratom.” He called it shocking that officials are “contemplating sort of allowing” 7-OH, the opposite of the kratom ban Ingraham wants. He warned that mixing kratom with alcohol, muscle relaxants or benzodiazepines is “seriously dangerous,” and that “inadvertent overdoses are not out of the question even on low dose.”
Then he turned to marijuana. “Just the concentration of THC in weed in states where it’s legal has become equally, perhaps more dangerous than substances like this,” Pinsky said. The real problem, he argued, is “this sort of casual attitude towards very dangerous substances.”
The case for a kratom ban
The numbers back up the alarm. At least 5,208 overdose deaths from 2020 to 2024 involved kratom, according to CDC overdose data. Kratom exposure reports to poison centers rose 1,231 percent between 2015 and 2025.
Kevin Sabet, president and CEO of the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions, pressed the case for a kratom ban on Fox News Thursday morning. “Keeping these products widely available serves the people making money from them,” he wrote afterward.
Oxford has already banned kratom locally. But shoppers can still buy it in surrounding counties, said Capt. Alex Fauver of the Metro Narcotics unit. “We have a lot of problems with the kratom and people on it,” he told NBC News. “It has no medical use.”
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