Kootenai Sheriff Raises Alarm Over Rising Kratom Use

Kootenai County is showing up on a national map of kratom-related emergencies, and Sheriff Robert Norris used a county status update at the Kootenai County Administration Building to warn that the substance is surfacing locally. The National Drug Early Warning System placed Kootenai County among the U.S. counties with the highest rates of kratom and 7-OH-related EMS encounters per 10,000 people from January 1, 2023, through April 30, 2025.

Norris, who began his term as Kootenai County sheriff on January 1, 2021, raised the issue as Idaho lawmakers debated House Bill 864. The bill, introduced and referred to the House Health and Welfare Committee on March 10, would classify kratom-related compounds as a Schedule I controlled substance and make it illegal to sell or possess in Idaho. Dozens of people testified for and against the proposal in Boise, with kratom users and sellers describing it as a pain-relief aid while public safety officials warned about abuse potential.

Federal agencies paint a far more cautious picture. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says there are no FDA-approved kratom drug products or over-the-counter drugs containing kratom legally on the U.S. market, and the Drug Enforcement Administration lists kratom as a Drug and Chemical of Concern. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis of poison center data from 2015 through 2025 found kratom-related exposure reports rose from 258 to 3,434, about a 1,200% increase, and said the most severe outcomes were tied to multiple-substance exposures.

Idaho has already stood out in poison center data. An Idaho health department publication said the state had the highest kratom exposure rate in the country and tied earlier concerns to kratom-related deaths in Idaho. That puts Norris’s warning in a sharper local context, especially for a county that now appears on a national list of EMS encounter hotspots.

For families, the stakes are practical as well as legal. Kratom is being marketed as a help for pain, but the data increasingly link it to emergency response calls, poison-center reports, and higher-risk outcomes when it is combined with other substances. In Kootenai County, the argument is no longer abstract: it is about whether a product some people view as self-treatment is becoming another public-health problem that local schools, parents, and first responders have to confront.