A 55-year-old Menifee mother died unexpectedly in her sleep, and her family says a kratom product she bought at a local smoke shop is to blame. Lauren Dominguez's mother was found unresponsive at home, and a coroner's report listed the cause of death as acute mitragynine intoxication, with chronic alcohol use noted as a contributing factor.
Dominguez's family has filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer and retailer of the kratom product, according to ABC7 Los Angeles. Attorney Michael Jeandron, who represents Dominguez and her family, said the suit targets both the maker of the product, identified as Exotic Blue Magic, and Almond Smoke Shop in Menifee, California, where Dominguez's mother purchased it. Dominguez said her mother's death has continued to affect her family, and that her mother had been her family's last safe place after her father died unexpectedly eleven years earlier.
“My mom died from it,” Dominguez said, per the ABC7 report. She said her mother's children now fear that she may go to sleep and not wake up. Jeandron alleged that consumers may be misled about kratom's safety, telling the outlet that even a small dose of the substance can cause respiratory depression.
A Product Marketed as Natural, Regulators Say Otherwise
Kratom is often marketed as herbal, natural, and a dietary supplement, and the company behind Dominguez's product marketed it as safe and tested, the family's suit alleges. But mitragynine, one of the main chemicals found in kratom products, is not without risk, and the California Department of Public Health has reported that kratom can lead to addiction, serious harm, overdose, and death. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which warned consumers on Dec. 2, 2025, kratom carries risks of serious adverse events including liver toxicity, seizures, and substance use disorder. Kratom is illegal to sell in California, according to the ABC7 report. Both the Exotic Blue Magic manufacturer and the Almond Smoke Shop owner received requests for comment from ABC7 but had not responded at the time of publication.
Dominguez's family is not alone in pursuing legal action tied to the Exotic Blue Magic brand. A separate consumer class-action lawsuit, I.P. et al. v. Hundreds Premium LLC, was filed in July 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California against Hundreds Premium LLC, the distributor operating as Exotic Blue Magic, alleging deceptive marketing that presented its kratom products as safe supplements without disclosing addiction and withdrawal risks, according to Rain Intelligence. Dominguez said she hopes the product will no longer be available for sale.
San Diego County Has Logged Dozens of Kratom Deaths
The Menifee case lands amid a broader Southern California reckoning with kratom sales. About three months earlier, the San Diego City Attorney's Office filed a civil enforcement lawsuit against the owner of eleven local smoke shops for selling banned kratom products, revealing that kratom has been linked to at least 38 fatal overdoses in San Diego County since 2021, as reported by CBS 8 San Diego. San Diego banned retail kratom sales within city limits nearly a decade ago, yet enforcement has continued to lag behind the product's availability at smoke shops and gas stations statewide.
Nationally, courts have already handed down steep penalties against kratom sellers in wrongful-death cases. In July 2023, a Washington state jury awarded $2.5 million to the family of a 39-year-old man who died from acute mitragynine toxicity, the first jury verdict in the country to find a kratom distributor liable for inadequate warnings, according to mctlaw. That same month, a Florida federal judge ordered Grow LLC, operating as The Kratom Distro, to pay $11.6 million in default damages to the family of a 39-year-old mother whose fatal overdose was attributed to acute mitragynine intoxication from a concentrated kratom product, as reported by NBC News.
Federal and State Regulators Are Racing to Catch Up
Federal regulators have grown increasingly alarmed about kratom's more potent derivatives. In July 2025, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a scientific assessment warning that concentrated 7-hydroxymitragynine, or 7-OH, acts as a potent mu-opioid receptor agonist with greater relative potency than morphine, making unregulated sales in gas stations and smoke shops a major overdose threat. The FDA has not approved any prescription or over-the-counter drug products containing kratom. On July 1, 2026, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration filed a notice of intent to temporarily place 7-OH into Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act to curb growing public health risks.
California has also moved on the enforcement front even as legislative reform stalls. In January, the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control warned liquor licensees statewide that selling kratom or 7-OH products is illegal and must stop. In May, the California Department of Public Health and Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a joint lawsuit in San Diego County Superior Court against Ashlynn Marketing Group, doing business as Krave Botanicals, seeking to confiscate and destroy embargoed kratom inventory statewide.
Meanwhile, Assembly Bill 1088, which passed the state Assembly unanimously and would have established statewide labeling, laboratory testing, and age-21 restrictions for kratom, stalled after its author requested that its Senate Health Committee hearing be canceled in June amid debate over agency fee structures. That leaves California without a formal regulatory framework even as state agencies pursue individual civil actions against manufacturers and retailers.
Poison Control Calls Have Surged Nationwide
The broader public health picture underscores why cases like Dominguez's are drawing legal scrutiny. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in March that U.S. poison control center calls regarding kratom exposures increased by more than 1,200 percent between 2015 and 2025, with multi-substance exposures involving alcohol or opioids resulting in the most severe clinical outcomes. The coroner's report in Dominguez's mother's case also listed chronic alcohol use as a contributing factor alongside mitragynine.
For now, Dominguez's family is left waiting for a resolution to their lawsuit while grappling with the loss of a woman she described as her family's anchor. Neither the Exotic Blue Magic manufacturer nor the Almond Smoke Shop owner had responded to requests for comment as of the ABC7 report's publication.
