For most of my career in law enforcement, I operated under a simple belief: public safety laws should be clear, enforceable, and focused on actual threats facing our communities. When legislation fails those standards, the consequences rarely stay confined to the Capitol. They eventually land on the shoulders of officers, deputies, prosecutors, retailers, and everyday citizens trying to understand what the law actually requires.
That is why California’s AB 1088, brought forward by the 35th District’s Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains (D-Delano), raises serious concerns from a law enforcement perspective.
The bill, which on its surface appears to establish common sense regulations for kratom-related products, contains a smaller but highly significant provision targeting a subset of products containing 7-hydroxymitragynine, or 7-OH.
While portions of the proposal, particularly age restrictions and consumer safeguards, reflect reasonable policy goals, the broader structure of AB 1088 raises serious questions from both a scientific and enforcement standpoint.
In January, I personally met with lawmakers in Sacramento to discuss many of these enforcement concerns directly, including the practical challenges surrounding ingredient caps, product distinctions, and field enforcement realities. Unfortunately, those concerns do not appear to have been meaningfully addressed in the current version of the bill.
As currently written, the bill appears to move ahead of the available science, ahead of the practical realities facing law enforcement, and ahead of a full understanding of how these policies would function in the real world.
Most importantly, it feels incomplete and rushed…
Most people outside of law enforcement assume new drug-related legislation is relatively straightforward to enforce. In reality, it rarely is.
AB 1088 (Bains) creates a framework that asks law enforcement agencies to distinguish between products based on chemical composition standards, ingredient concentrations, and alkaloid thresholds. That may sound manageable on paper, but in practice it creates enormous enforcement complications.
Police officers are not chemists. Patrol deputies do not carry laboratory testing equipment in their vehicles. Most agencies do not have the budget, staffing, or training capacity to properly identify whether a particular product exceeds a certain ingredient cap or falls within a legally permitted threshold. These determinations often require laboratory analysis, technical expertise, and resources many jurisdictions simply do not have available.
When laws become overly technical and difficult to apply in the field, enforcement inevitably becomes inconsistent. That creates confusion not only for officers, but for businesses, prosecutors, and consumers as well. Confusing laws are rarely effective laws.
This concern becomes even more significant when considering the broader public safety environment California law enforcement agencies are already navigating today. Departments across the state continue to face staffing shortages, rising fentanyl trafficking, organized retail crime, mental health crises, homelessness-related calls, and violent crime concerns that demand substantial time and attention. These are real and immediate public safety threats impacting communities every single day.
Against that backdrop, AB 1088 (Bains) asks already strained agencies to dedicate additional resources toward enforcing highly technical ingredient regulations surrounding products that law enforcement agencies are not broadly identifying as a major driver of criminal activity or public safety disruption.
That raises an important question: Is this truly the best use of limited law enforcement resources?
Law enforcement has seen the consequences of rushed drug policy decisions before. Policies created without sufficient consideration for enforcement realities often produce unintended outcomes. Markets do not simply disappear because lawmakers pass restrictive legislation. More often, they shift into less transparent and less regulated channels, creating even greater difficulties for public safety agencies and greater risks for consumers.
None of this means there should be no regulation. Reasonable safeguards are entirely appropriate. Age restrictions, manufacturing standards, labeling requirements, and protections designed to keep products away from minors are all sensible areas for discussion. But that is very different from constructing a confusing enforcement structure that local agencies may struggle to realistically implement.
As currently written, Bains’ AB 1088 falls short of that standard. California lawmakers should slow this process down, revisit the science, consult directly with law enforcement agencies responsible for carrying out these policies, and pursue an approach rooted in clarity, practicality, and evidence-based regulation.
Public safety deserves thoughtful policymaking, not rushed legislation that creates more confusion than solutions.
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