See must read NYT story below. Reaction from Protect Our Care’s Jeremy Funk: “Trump health secretary RFK Jr. often treats career scientists and legitimate medical doctors like criminals for so much as adhering to peer-reviewed data proving vaccines safe and effective. But when it comes to an actual ex-con who inexplicably changed their name before getting rich hawking unregulated mind-altering substances linked to liver toxicity and even death — and who also happened to dump a bunch of money into RFK Jr.’s dormant presidential war chest? Well, in Secretary Kennedy’s book, that’s an upstanding citizen deserving of his personal intervention with a Governor to keep that dangerous snake oil on gas station shelves, earning an RFK Jr.-tied PAC another cool million dollars. Hazardous charlatans gotta look out for each other it seems, but it’s less than ideal when one is the highest-ranking health official in America.”
NYT: How an Addictive Gas Station Drug Found Allies in Trump’s Cabinet
By Kenneth P. Vogel and Christina Jewett
For years, federal health officials have warned about the risks associated with a supplement derived from the leaves of kratom trees that adherents say can kill pain or boost energy. Sold in gas stations across America, kratom has been linked to liver toxicity, seizures and thousands of deaths.
Powerful figures close to President Trump, including Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, pushed to downplay those concerns.
Mr. Mullin, until recently a Republican senator from Oklahoma, played a key role in a sprawling influence campaign spearheaded by the kratom industry that courted Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Vice President JD Vance, among others in the Trump administration, an investigation by The New York Times found.
Only when he was nominated by Mr. Trump in March to lead the Homeland Security Department did it become clear that Mr. Mullin had a financial connection to the supplement. In a disclosure statement, he listed an investment worth as much as $1 million in a kratom company, Botanic Tonics, that could benefit from the changes he has sought.
The company’s founder, Jerry W. Ross — who had been an energy executive in Mr. Mullin’s home state before pleading guilty to a financial crime — is a leading player in the influence campaign that was devised to benefit kratom at the expense of its rivals in the marketplace.
The Times’s investigation — drawn from campaign finance data, lobbying disclosures, court filings, private correspondence and dozens of interviews — found the following:
- Mr. Ross ramped up his donations to Mr. Kennedy’s defunct presidential campaign after Mr. Trump chose him to be health secretary. Mr. Ross privately boasted that he was “working on a plan for Bobby.”
- The F.D.A. in 2025 deleted links on its kratom webpage that detailed a then-pending legal case against Mr. Ross’s company, Botanic Tonics, after his allies pushed for the change.
- Botanic Tonics had been sued by the federal government for illegally selling kratom products that were not proven safe, which the company disputed. But in December, the Justice Department suddenly moved to drop the case — which the company celebrated as a sign of the federal government’s receptiveness to kratom.
- Mr. Kennedy, as health secretary, called the governor of Ohio to try to head off a state ban on kratom in the fall of 2025. Months later, Botanic Tonics donated $1 million to a political committee associated with Mr. Kennedy.
- Mr. Ross, joined by the influential lobbyist Ches McDowell, used donations to secure a private audience with Mr. Vance to lobby him about the benefits of kratom and to urge the ban on the synthetic products.