Three compounds sold in flavoured chewable tablets become Schedule I on Wednesday, and anyone holding stock who cannot get a registration has to surrender it

A product you could buy online this morning becomes a Schedule I controlled substance on Wednesday.

The Drug Enforcement Administration filed a temporary scheduling order for public inspection on Monday afternoon, at 16:15 Eastern, three quarters of an hour after the markets closed and long after most of the day's federal news had been written. It is scheduled to publish on 26 August, and it takes effect that day.

Three substances go into Schedule I: mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, MGM-15, and MGM-16. The order covers their isomers, esters, ethers and salts, and says the structures are covered whatever numbering a chemist uses.

The finding

Temporary scheduling runs on a single statutory test. DEA has to find that the placement is necessary to avoid an imminent hazard to public safety, and it has made that finding here.

The pharmacology in the document explains why. All three bind strongly to the mu-opioid receptor and act as agonists there. Preclinical studies, the order says, show them producing analgesia more potent than morphine. DEA lists cardiotoxicity, damage to the liver and kidneys, respiratory depression, neurological effects, and dependence and withdrawal among the risks it attributes to them.

The notice of intent went out on 6 July. This is the order that follows it.

What the order is actually looking at

Read the footnotes rather than the summary, because that is where the retail market is.

DEA is not describing a laboratory curiosity. It cites live product listings, accessed in January and March of this year, for chewable tablets sold under names including Fruity Perks and Dozo Perks at 100mg a tablet, for red vein pseudoindoxyl chewables, and for a seven count pack of 15mg MGM-15 tablets. One footnote notes that the web page has since been changed or taken down and that a paper copy sits in the agency's administrative record.

The order describes a shift away from leaf preparations of Mitragyna speciosa towards what it calls flavored, standardized, and high-potency semi-synthetic substances. It reads the fruit flavours and the chewable format as an effort to reach a broader and potentially younger customer. It describes "research chemical" labelling on those products as a common tactic to bypass regulatory oversight.

A market audit of online retailers, dated January 2026, is cited as the underlying survey.

The numbers, and what they count

The order carries three figures from poison control centres, and all three are about kratom in general rather than about these compounds.

There were 1,690 exposure calls involving kratom between January and July 2025. A CDC morbidity and mortality weekly report puts the increase in kratom exposure calls at more than 1,200 percent between 2015, when there were 258, and 2025, when there were 3,434. Over eleven years, poison centres logged 14,449 kratom exposure reports.

DEA offers no separate count for mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, MGM-15 or MGM-16, and explains why it cannot: because the three are not federally controlled, some forensic laboratories do not analyse or track them at all.

No court

The last thing in the order that matters is a cross reference.

Permanent scheduling goes through formal rulemaking, and the final decision can be taken to a court of appeals under 21 U.S.C. 877. Temporary scheduling cannot. The statute says so at 21 U.S.C. 811(h)(6), and the order repeats it.

So the order stands for two years, until 26 August 2028, unless DEA extends it or makes it permanent. Anyone who holds these substances and cannot get a Schedule I registration must surrender what they have. Registrants get thirty calendar days to bring labelling, packaging and inventory into compliance, and no longer.