Open Truth Project: A Public-Record Archive Tracking What Gets Left Out of Kratom Policy

Why it matters

The Open Truth Project is the most comprehensive primary-source archive on kratom-associated deaths, providing autopsy records, toxicology data, and court files that legislators and media have largely omitted from the policy debate.

The big picture

A national pattern in kratom policy advocacy has gone largely unchallenged: complicated deaths — involving multiple drugs, significant medical histories, and unresolved toxicology — are reduced to a single word and used to justify broad prohibition. The Open Truth Project collects the underlying records — autopsies, toxicology panels, FOIA files, legislative records, court documents — in one publicly accessible archive.

Key findings

• 15 toxicology death cases reviewed with full source files and animated readouts.
• 18 named autopsy records published with downloadable PDFs.
• 9 case studies documenting the gap between public narrative and forensic record.
• CDC data: 79% of kratom-associated deaths involve multiple substances.
• NMS Labs forensic analysis: 'They're not finding huge amounts of kratom material in gastric contents — it's usually pretty empty inside.'
• 2025 poison-control spike coincided with concentrated semisynthetic 7-OH products, per CDC 2026 NPDS analysis.
• Six recurring evidentiary failures identified across nine reviewed cases.
• Forensic evidentiary standard proposed: presence is not causation; mitragynine detected is not the whole story.

What they say

"Policy must be built on science and data, not half truths." — Open Truth Project

Bottom line

The Open Truth Project does not argue all kratom products are safe. It argues that natural leaf, concentrated extracts, and semisynthetic 7-OH are distinct products — and that collapsing them into a single prohibition punishes the wrong people for the wrong product's risks.