Deaths Prompt Kratom Ban
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Express Mart No. 7 owner Ibrahim Aydah explains to Water Valley city officials during Monday’s special called meeting that he had been trying to follow state and local laws governing the products sold at his store.
WATER VALLEY — The Water Valley Board of Aldermen voted unanimously Monday to ban the possession, use and sale of kratom and other synthetic products designed for human consumption, days after the deaths of two University of Mississippi students and a federal search of a local convenience store.
The ordinance took effect upon passage Monday at 5:23 p.m.
The action came one week after University of Mississippi students Aidan Hamilton, 18, and Robert Strang, 20, were found unresponsive in separate locations in Oxford on Sept. 21.
Lafayette County Metro Narcotics reported that packaged kratom sold from a retail store was found during both death investigations. Toxicology results are still pending.
The investigation centers in part on packages labeled “SMAX” Pseudo-DHM. Similar packaging was found near both Strang and Hamilton. Court documents filed by an agent with the Lafayette County Metro Narcotics Unit describe the pills as a suspected kratom product. Preliminary laboratory testing detected 7-hydroxymitragynine, commonly known as 7-OH, in some pills, while additional testing was ordered for other compounds listed on the packaging.
Court records show investigators also focused on a Water Valley store.
According to documents filed by an agent with the Lafayette County Metro Narcotics Unit, Strang purchased the product at Express Mart No. 7 on Highway 315 in Water Valley. Federal agents executed a search warrant at the store Friday night.
Express Mart owner Ibrahim Aydah told aldermen Monday that agents seized what he estimated was approximately $70,000 worth of kratom products from his business.
Local officers previously confirmed that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration executed the search warrant with assistance from the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, Lafayette County Metro Narcotics, University Police Department, Water Valley Police Department and Yalobusha County Sheriff’s Department.
Aydah told aldermen he had attempted to comply with state and local laws and had made no effort to conceal the products.
“My products were not hidden. They were on the shelf,” Aydah said.
He said agents told him federal law concerning some of the products had changed about a month earlier.
“So if you just banned the kratom today, according to the feds, they said it has been illegal for a month,” Aydah told aldermen. “How can I protect my business in the future? I lost $70,000.”
City Attorney Daniel Martin explained that the city has no authority to override federal law.
“If the federal government in Washington, D.C., says that something is disallowed or illegal, the state of Mississippi can’t undo that. And for sure the City of Water Valley cannot,” Martin explained.
Aydah said agents left some products behind, but he discarded them rather than risk violating the law.
“They left some stuff. I trashed it,” Aydah said. “I don’t want to get in trouble. But it hurts whenever they come.”
“We all appreciate your business out there, we really do,” Martin told him.
“We do,” Mayor Tommy Reynolds added.
Federal action on kratom has focused on specific synthetic compounds rather than a blanket ban on kratom. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in August placed three synthetic kratom-related substances — mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, MGM-15 and MGM-16 — into Schedule I of the federal Controlled Substances Act, according to the agency’s website.
The city’s action Monday was not its first consideration of kratom.
Police Chief Jason Mangrum asked aldermen in August 2025 to consider prohibiting the substance, telling the board at the time that because it was not identified as a Schedule I substance under state law, it could be purchased legally. The proposed ordinance was nearly identical to the one enacted Monday. City Attorney Daniel Martin was asked to review the proposal during the 2025 meeting, but the board took no further action until Monday.
Aldermen also voted in July to restrict other products sold at convenience stores, adopting ordinances regulating hemp-derived products and nitrous oxide products after Mangrum raised concerns about their availability and use.
Mangrum reported Monday that hemp-derived products and nitrous oxide products covered by those ordinances were also seized by city officers from Express Mart during Friday’s search.
