In summary
A drinkable product called Feel Free was once marketed to USC students as a wellness tonic. It contains an addictive, opioid-like ingredient called kratom leaf, now banned for sale by the California Department of Public Health but still available in many stores. A new bill in the Legislature would make the ban permanent in California.
California legislators are attempting to regulate products containing an addictive, opioid-like plant — one that, until recently, several universities including the University of Southern California marketed in a beverage as a wellness tonic and distributed at no cost.
Feel Free is a psychoactive tonic drink that can be consumed like a shot of tequila or Nyquil. The small, two-ounce blue bottles are available in places from smoke shops to health food stores in California. It is made from plants, kava root and kratom leaf, the latter of which contains organic compounds called alkaloids that act like drugs in the human body. These alkaloids — 7-hydroxymitragynine and mitragynine — are not technically opioids, but they interact with the same brain receptors as opioids to produce pleasure and relieve pain.
The California Public Health Department announced a campaign to remove kratom from stores last October and has since seized $5 million in kratom products, justifying the enforcement using California’s Sherman Law. This law lays out rules for selling and manufacturing food, drugs, cosmetics and supplements, and grants Public Health the authority to seize those types of products if they are not federally or state approved.
State lawmakers have moved to formally add kratom and the compound 7-OH to the Sherman Law, which they said would unlock additional resources for the health department’s crackdown and protect their ability to conduct that enforcement if kratom’s federal legality is unclear. One such bill will be heard by a state Senate committee later this year. The priority, according to the bill’s author, Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, a Bakersfield Democrat and a physician, is to keep kratom out of the hands of children.
Kratom gives a ‘floaty,’ ‘soft feeling’
Feel Free is earthy and aromatic, but customers don’t drink it for the taste, according to the drink’s manufacturer Botanic Tonics.
“It just made me feel a little bit floaty,” said a 2024 University of Texas at Austin alumnus who requested anonymity in this story due to her public job. Botanic Tonics sponsored her university from 2022 to 2025. “It gives everything like a soft feeling.”
Shortly after its founding, Botanic Tonics partnered with universities through athletic department sponsorships that required marketing Feel Free as medicinal. This included Florida State University, University of Texas at Austin, and USC. Botanic Tonics did not respond to multiple inquiries from CalMatters on whether they sought a college student consumer base.
Kratom leaves, which are plucked from coffee trees in Southeast Asia, are used and branded as alternatives to alcohol and to lessen symptoms of withdrawal from other substances like opioids. A small amount of kratom typically makes people feel alert and energetic. But high doses can produce opioid-like effects like nausea, itching, dry mouth, drowsiness, insomnia, or even psychosis, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
It can also lead to serious adverse effects like liver toxicity, seizures and addiction, according to the Food and Drug Administration, which has not approved the plant as a lawful dietary supplement or drug. The 7-OH compound, whose effects can be reversed with Narcan, is less prevalent than mitragynine in kratom, but binds much more strongly to opioid receptors and can cause fatal overdoses.
Thousands of Reddit users on the subreddits r/Quittingfeelfree and r/Quittingkratom report physical and emotional effects, as well as severe withdrawal symptoms from the product itself. Botanic Tonics states on its website that people with histories of substance abuse should not drink Feel Free, adding it can be “habit-forming and harmful” if used improperly.
California’s Alcoholic Beverage Control department said in January it will enforce the health department’s prohibition, ordering stores with liquor licenses to remove kratom from their shelves. Cities have enacted their own bans and limitations, including Anaheim, Oceanside, Jurupa Valley, Newport Beach and San Diego, along with the counties of Los Angeles and Riverside. Botanic Tonics still lists on its website locations throughout California where the products can be purchased.
Kava root, which can ease anxiety and insomnia, does not contain opioid-like alkaloids and is regulated by the FDA; some people have reported liver toxicity and skin ailments after consuming it.
Feel Free was founded in 2020 with headquarters in Santa Monica and in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Within a few years, the Texas student said, the product was part of the college atmosphere, especially at parties, where she would see students chug multiple servings at once, leaving waves of empty blue bottles rolling around the floor.
The 2-ounce tonics, about $10 each, could be bought in any gas station, bodega or convenience store in Texas, and she saw many students drinking them on and off campus. “It would mess people up. People would use it to pregame,” she said. “Whenever people used it, they would shoot the entire thing.”
“We were introduced to them as… a potential partner at the university,” the Texas student said. “So I trusted it. That’s the thing. I never thought twice about it.”
Trojans try new product
The USC Trojans had a turbulent relationship with Botanic Tonics, according to Jose Eskenazi, former associate athletic director who was laid off due to budget cuts in August 2025 after 22 years on the job. He said that around the time of Feel Free’s founding, PlayFly Sports, USC’s sports marketing partner, approached him with a sponsorship contract. Eskenazi remembered the advertising materials he reviewed seemed innocuous, and that the product was described as “calming.” So he signed a three-year contract.
“It was just a different category of business that we had never been involved in,” he said. “It all seemed legitimate.” The product was already being sold in the area at the time, at health food stores and USC Village, the nearby shopping mall where students hang out, he added.
“In retrospect, I mean, could we have dug a little deeper? Maybe,” Eskenazi said. “But from what I recall, the research that was done, there was nothing negative that came up at the time.
“I think they probably could have done a better job explaining what their product is,” he said.
To fulfill their role in the partnership, the Trojans agreed to display digital rotating signage in sports stadiums, promote Feel Free on social media, and advertise the product on football game radio broadcasts.
Another requisite, Eskenazi said, was giving out free samples of the product. The Trojans’ corporate partners would set up booths at the annual Fan Fest, including Botanic Tonics, which gave out samples, he said.
Things went south a few years into the partnership, Eskenazi said. USC officials would not comment on why the partnership ended, but Eskenazi said people complained to the university that though the drink was marketed to addicts in sobriety, people were using it to get high.
In response, the college administration asked the athletic department to end the sponsorship, so the department terminated the contract after about 1.5 years, Eskenazi said.
“We’ve never really had a situation like that before, where we cancelled the sponsorship based on some feedback that we had gotten,” Eskenazi said. “It wasn’t the right brand to align with our brand, based on the complaints that occurred.”
David Wright, the vice president of USC Administration since 2019, deferred CalMatters inquiries about the sponsorship to the USC media relations director, who deferred the inquiries to Cody Worsham, USC athletics media relations director. Worsham told CalMatters that they reached out to “previous” USC and athletics leaders and received no response.
CalMatters attempted to contact USC athletes from 2021 and 2022, who did not respond to questions about the Feel Free sponsorship.
USC, a private university, is not beholden to California public record laws. The Florida and Texas universities, both public, released their sponsorship contracts with Botanic Tonics through public record requests.
The contracts required the universities to make Feel Free their “official tonic,” and refuse any other partnerships with medicinal tonics “taken to give a feeling of vigor or well-being.”
Florida State and the University of Texas at Austin agreed to market Feel Free through social media campaigns, arena-level LED signage, intercom announcements and “on-court promotion.” Florida’s agreement required the university to distribute samples of the drink to students, including at games and at the block parties held beforehand, and the company gained the right to use the college’s name and logo in their advertising. Texas gave Botanic Tonics the right to distribute free samples at college games and events.
The Texas contract expired in June 2025. Florida State terminated the contract in early 2024, the university’s deputy athletics director, Douglas Walker, told CalMatters, without stating why.
Kratom is legal for those ages 18 and up in Texas and 21 and older in Florida. Laws passed in 2023 in both states require kratom product labels to have use directions and serving sizes; Florida also banned selling kratom products that claim to be medicinal. In 2025, Texas and Florida legislators proposed bills to set higher standards for kratom product testing and further regulate its distribution, but the bills have not progressed.
Wellness emphasis
The Texas student worked at a health food store near campus while she attended college. The store sought to appeal to health-conscious people like university athletes and students, and specialized in products that were clean and natural. Her managers told her to market Feel Free to customers as an energizing alcohol alternative that could help with mental clarity and studying.
Since she was paid on commission, the student said, she recommended the drink to hundreds of customers. The drink was natural, healthy and would offer five hours of pure energy, without cops ever having a reason to pull you over, she would say.
“‘Makes you feel good. Go on for it. Just take it,’” she said. “Oh yeah, they sold. They sold fast.” She began to notice repeat customers.
The student, her manager, and a couple of coworkers decided to try it themselves one day. She said the drink made her feel detached and she didn’t like it. But her coworker, in his 20s, took to it immediately. “The effect was quick,” she said. “He went from doing one maybe every other day to… buying three to four, four to five bottles at a time. And these are expensive little bottles.”
Eventually, she said, the coworker developed a tolerance. Feel Free bottles contain two servings, but he would drink three bottles and say they had no effect. He turned to kratom supplement pills, which he would buy and consume in bulk. Witnessing the effect of the substance, she said, was like watching someone smoke too much weed. “It had altered his mood and it had altered his mental state and his behavior,” she said.
In October 2025, a U.S. District Court judge in Northern California approved a settlement for over 40,000 plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against Botanic Tonics, which alleged the product was sold without disclosing the health risks of kratom. According to the plaintiffs’ complaint, the company directly targeted college students because they were “vulnerable” and could recommend it to family and friends. The suit also alleged that Feel Free served free samples to students on the USC campus, including a study center, during finals week, telling students it would fix their stress.
The Texas student said she searched the product online one day, read about the side effects, and immediately stopped recommending the product after that. “It was marketed as a healthy thing, it was like a study thing. I had no idea,” she said. “It’s frustrating whenever you take a substance and you put it in your body and you have no idea the side effects that it could cause.”
California legislators concerned for children
In February 2024, San Francisco Democratic Assemblymember Matt Haney proposed a law to add kratom products to the Sherman Law, ban the sale of products containing kratom that is synthetic, inhalable or appealing to young people, and prohibit selling kratom to people under age 21, a restriction that Botanic Tonics adopted in May 2024. Since it was estimated to cost over $50,000 annually to uphold, the Senate Appropriations Committee assigned the bill to the suspense file, where it never left and ultimately failed.
Bains, the lawmaker from Bakersfield, introduced a bill in February 2025 with similar kratom regulations that the Senate health committee will consider later this year. A spokesperson for Bains told CalMatters that while kratom and 7-OH are currently not legal to sell as food or drugs under California’s Sherman Law, the goal of her new law is to keep it that way. Bains said she is particularly concerned about the impact of kratom on young brains, adding that kratom marketing uses bright colors and mimics candy packaging in order to appeal to young people.
“The neuroscience is unambiguous. The human brain continues developing into the early 20s,” Bains said at a committee hearing. “Exposure to substances with central nervous system effects during this critical period can interfere with proper development and increase the risk of substance use disorders later in life.”
A California State University, San Bernardino researcher found in a 2025 study on online kratom beverage marketing that most kratom drinks are described as either all-natural or good for well-being — and that a person would be better off consuming them, researcher and assistant economics professor Dr. Teresa Perry said. In another 2025 study, Perry analyzed online posts about kratom and found that kratom drinkers often don’t know about the side effects, because product labels don’t mention them.
“There’s a lot of people who were taking kratom without realizing what kratom was, and who became dependent on it, who then had to figure out how to quit it on their own,” Perry said.
Phoebe Huss is a contributor with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.
via CalMatters https://ift.tt/XYqhE7n
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