The Brief

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.

A screenshot from a Feel Free webpage that shows a store locator map with multiple pins marking locations around Sacramento where the product is available.

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CalMatters

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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.

A promotional Facebook post from 2022 advertises a giveaway for two USC basketball game tickets alongside a bottle of Feel Free tonic. The product is described as the “Official tonic of USC Athletics.”

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Screenshot via the Feel Free Tonics Facebook page

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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.

Bottles of the energy drink Feel Free in Clovis on March 6, 2026.

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Larry Valenzuela

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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.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such battery energy storage systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”

It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

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In an attempt to resolve evictions before they go to trial, the Los Angeles County Superior Court has launched new programs that seek to facilitate settlements by providing free attorneys to tenants and financial relief to landlords who are owed back rent.

Presiding Judge Sergio Tapia said these pilot programs are designed to stem the tide of evictions, which have risen sharply since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We're trying to show litigants across the board, whether it’s tenants or landlords, that the court is the opportunity to try to find resolution faster,” Tapia told LAist.

Both tenant and landlord attorneys agree that settlements can often be the best path for both parties.

One program launched last month in downtown L.A.’s Stanley Mosk Courthouse gives tenants the right to request a mandatory settlement conference overseen by a court-appointed settlement officer.

These tenants, who rarely come to court with legal representation, will be given a free attorney to guide them though the settlement conferences, as long as they earn less than 125% of the federal poverty level.

But lawyers who represent landlords say their clients often feel local government is increasingly putting money toward helping renters, while leaving property owners struggling.

Where does funding come from?

Facing eviction without a lawyer “puts people at such an enormous disadvantage, when landlords normally have lawyers,” said Conway Collis, president of the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles, a nonprofit that is helping to fund the Mosk program’s free attorneys.

Other funding comes from Stay Housed L.A., a legal aid partnership funded by the county of L.A. and the city of L.A. through its “mansion tax.”

Landlords will be required to notify tenants about the program in the eviction paperwork they serve to tenants.

Settlement officers come from the court’s pool of temporary judges, who handle lower-level cases, such as traffic infractions. Other officers are retired judges or trained lawyers.

The settlement conferences are being held on the same day as regularly scheduled court hearings, one floor down from the Mosk courthouse’s eviction department.

How are the conferences working so far?

Elena Popp, the executive director of the Eviction Defense Network, which is providing lawyers for the program, said that on one recent day, landlords and tenants were able to reach mutually agreeable settlements in about half the conferences.

“We settled one,” Popp said. “We are very close to settling a second one. The other two are way further apart because the tenant really wants to stay on, but the landlord really wants them to go.”

Settlement deals look different in each case, Popp said. Sometimes they involve landlords letting tenants stay if they pay overdue rent. In other cases, tenants are given additional time to find new housing before they must leave. When settlements are reached, cases are sealed so that evictions won’t be visible on a tenant’s record, a black mark that makes it very difficult to find new housing.

When settlements can’t be reached, landlords and tenants go back upstairs to resume their normal proceedings, Popp said.

No matter how cases are resolved, she said, tenants can’t be expected to navigate legally complex processes on their own.

“One of the things that we stressed when we were setting this up is that you absolutely have to have a lawyer,” Popp said.

Compton program pairs settlements with money to landlords

Another pilot program launched last month at the Compton courthouse offers up to $10,000 to cover rent owed to landlords in cases that settle. Landlords will be required to inform tenants about the settlement conferences. To qualify, either the tenant or the landlord must earn no more than 120% of the area’s median income.

The settlement conferences at the Compton courthouse are overseen by Community Legal Aid of Southern California, and rent relief funding is administered by L.A. County’s Department of Consumer and Business Affairs.

Attorney Aaron Kohanim, who represents landlords, said he advises his clients to settle whenever possible, because going to trial is “a casino — you don't know if you're going to win.”

But he also said landlords generally view taxpayer-funded attorneys for tenants as unfair.

“Only one side gets a piece of that pot,” Kohanim said. “Landlords have to pay out of pocket for their attorneys. And on top of that, they are not allowed to collect rent in the middle of the case, so they're getting beaten by two different angles, versus a tenant who is just living there rent-free and they get a free lawyer.”

Tapia said the programs are currently limited to the Mosk and Compton courthouses because of funding constraints and limited resources. But the judge said if they prove successful, they could be expanded county-wide.

“If we're able to show success, that will allow us to recruit a more robust set of settlement officers to perhaps expand,” Tapia said. “We need to see how this pilot plays out first.”