A San Francisco resident has died from an overdose involving MGM-15, a powerful opioid sold in gas stations and smoke shops that’s estimated to be up to 50 times stronger than morphine, city health officials said Wednesday.
The late-September death marked the city’s first fatal case linked to the drug, which is derived from the psychoactive plant kratom and found in products marketed as “cat’s claw,” or uncaria tomentosa.
The medical examiner detected MGM-15 in the victim’s system and inside the packaging of a supplement the person appeared to have consumed. Sold under the brand Script Botanicals x Maui Labs, the product makes no mention of kratom or its potent derivative 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH) on its packaging, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Details about the person who died were not immediately available…