Fentanyl in the cat’s claw tablets? A police field test said so. No crime lab has.

Since early September, people who take the tablets sold as cat's claw in Tennessee have been warning each other that the state found a fentanyl analogue in them. The claim has a source, and only one: a police statement from Greenbrier, a town north of Nashville, about a presumptive field test. No crime lab has published a result that finds fentanyl or any fentanyl analogue in these tablets. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's own warnings name kratom compounds, not fentanyl.

This article sets out what the police said, how it changed as it was retold, and what is still unpublished. For what the tablets are known to contain, see our article on the Utah deaths. For the Ole Miss case that set off the Mid-South raids, see our article on 7-OH's successors and the Modus dossier.

Figure 1. The claim in order, drawn by us from the sources below. Every step to the right of the line is a retelling, and none of them adds a test. [1]

What Greenbrier police said

On September 4, 2026, Greenbrier police searched a commercial building in a drug and money-laundering investigation. Smokey Barn News, a Robertson County news site, printed the department's account the next day. "More than 350 packages containing suspected illicit products were seized after Greenbrier Police executed a search warrant at a commercial building" in the city, it said.[1]

Then the test. "Representatives with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s Dangerous Drugs Task Force conducted presumptive field testing on samples of the seized products."[1] According to police, "preliminary testing indicated the alleged presence of mitragynine", of dihydro-7-hydroxymitragynine (MGM-15), of "a fentanyl analogue and p-fluorofentanyl", and of traces of other scheduled substances.[1] "Police said some products containing these substances may be marketed or labeled under names such as" Klaz or Cat's Claw.[1] The statement ended by saying "no additional information will be released at this time".[1]

Figure 2. The only official source for the fentanyl claim: the Greenbrier police statement, as Smokey Barn News printed it on September 5. It describes a presumptive field test, says the presence is alleged, and says products may be labelled Klaz or Cat's Claw. Advertisements between the paragraphs are cut out. [1]

Four things in that statement matter.

The test was done in the field, by a drug task force, on samples. A presumptive test is a screen, run before a laboratory confirms what a substance is. The statement does not say any sample went to a crime lab.

The presence is "alleged". The police chose that word.

The seizure was 350 packages of "suspected illicit products" in a drug and money-laundering case.[1] The statement does not say what all of them were. It lists the substances found across the samples and says some products "may be" labelled Klaz or Cat's Claw.[1] It does not say the fentanyl analogue was in a Klaz tablet, or in any tablet.

p-Fluorofentanyl is an unusual thing to find in a kratom-derived tablet and a common thing to find in illicit fentanyl. The Center for Forensic Science Research and Education describes it plainly: "pFF is a fentanyl analogue, and is considered a narcotic analgesic."[2] In the seized-drug study its 2024 alert reports, it was "almost always found together with fentanyl".[2] A confirmed result would matter a great deal. A field screen of a mixed seizure does not establish one.

Figure 3. What p-fluorofentanyl usually is: an adulterant in illicit fentanyl, found alongside fentanyl in 93 percent of the seized samples in the study this alert describes. [2]

How it was retold

WSMV in Nashville carried the story on September 6 and changed one sentence. "The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation tested the products and according to police, preliminary testing indicated the presence of" the same list.[3] "Presumptive field testing" by a task force had become the TBI testing the products. "Alleged presence" had become "presence".[3][1]

Three days later, on September 9, a post in r/quittingcatsclaw read: "In tennessee a store was raided, the tabs were tested and contained p-fluorofentanyl".[4] It gave no source. A later reply went further: "Sure enough, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation found p-fluorofentanyl in Klaz in small amounts."[4] A September 11 image post in another forum, "klaz contains fentanyl analong", drew the question "Is this just propaganda or are there real independent test results showing this?"[5] The image has since been deleted.

On October 2, the day after the Memphis raid, a West Tennessee user posted a long warning. "FENTANYL HAS BEEN FOUND IN THESE PRODUCTS." it said, and "Tennessee authorities have tested seized products and found fentanyl compounds".[6] Challenged, the poster quoted a source: "TBI testing found a fentanyl analogue and p-fluorofentanyl, along with mitragynine and dihydro-7-hydroxymitragynine".[6] The next day the poster posted three screenshots as proof. They are answers from Google's AI Mode.[6]

Figure 4. The screenshot a Reddit user posted on October 3 as the source for the fentanyl claim. It is a Google AI Mode answer. The police statement it summarises says presumptive field testing, not forensic lab testing, and does not mention mitragynine pseudoindoxyl. [6]

The first screenshot, shown above, calls the Greenbrier screen forensic lab testing and says the results came from the TBI crime lab. It lists p-fluorofentanyl, another fentanyl analog, MGM-15, mitragynine and mitragynine pseudoindoxyl.[6] The police statement it summarises says a field test, not a crime lab, and does not mention pseudoindoxyl at all.[1] A second screenshot, about a separate Tipton County case, says community reports and other task force investigations indicate that products like Klaz are often laced with fentanyl analogs.[6] The summary cites the rumour as evidence for itself.

Another user asked the right question: "did they actually release the report and lab tests?"[6] The poster replied that the other user could request the records instead of arguing "whether a news report or an AI summary is accurate".[6]

What the TBI said in its own words

The TBI spoke about these tablets ten days after the Greenbrier search, and its message was about kratom. On September 14, WSMV reported that the "TBI said it is seeing an increase in products marketed as Cat’s Claw that actually contain MGM-15".[7] The same day, NewsChannel 9 in Chattanooga quoted Mark Delaney, special agent in charge of the TBI's drug investigation division. The bureau, he said, had seen "18 instances since July in which tablet packs labeled as Cat’s Claw that were laced with kratom were submitted to the TBI crime lab", "including some products that did not list kratom as an ingredient".[8]

Figure 5. Ten days after Greenbrier, the TBI's own warning named MGM-15. It did not mention fentanyl. [7]

Those are crime-lab submissions, the step the Greenbrier statement does not describe. In neither report does the TBI mention fentanyl or a fentanyl analogue.[7][8]

The next day WVLT in Knoxville interviewed the TBI with the Knox County Regional Forensic Center, the county's medical examiner. The station reported: "So far in 2026, Knox County has recorded 18 deaths involving kratom." Of those, "in five cases, kratom alkaloids were the sole cause of death".[9] The center's director spoke of synthetic kratom alkaloids. He named no fentanyl analogue.[9]

The Memphis raid

On October 1, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy and the West Tennessee Violent Crime and Drug Task Force announced a raid on Novelty King, a wholesaler on Broad Street in Memphis. Agents were "confiscating nearly 30,000 packages of illegal kratom products", and the products named included Klaz, Botanical Extract and Cat's Claw.[10] The task force director, Johnie Carter, said the product "has been chemically manipulated", "it is accompanied by fake lab tests, and it is deadly".[10] "No arrests were made at the warehouse Thursday."[10] What the record shows about the wholesaler is in its dossier, and about the maker of Klaz in the Meta Tabz dossier.

Figure 6. The Memphis raid on October 1. The task force sent samples to a TBI crime lab. No result has been published. Excerpts from one article. [10]

Nobody at that announcement said fentanyl. What Carter said about testing was that "random samples of Thursday’s seizure were brought to a TBI crime lab to find out exactly what chemicals and adulterants are inside".[10] As of October 13 no result from those samples has been published.

What buyers report about their own tests

The forum also holds the other side, and it is anecdote too. One buyer wrote on September 9 that Klaz made them test positive on fentanyl urine screens. "Confirmation test for fent metabolites are negative", they added.[4] Others in the same two threads posted negative home and laboratory fentanyl screens taken while they were using Klaz.[4][6] A screen that comes back positive and a confirmation that comes back negative is not a finding of fentanyl. Neither is a negative screen proof that a different batch was clean.

Still open

• Whether the Greenbrier samples went to a TBI crime lab, and what it found. The police said on September 5 that no more would be released.[1]
• Which of the 350 Greenbrier packages screened positive for a fentanyl analogue, and whether any of them was a tablet labelled Klaz or Cat's Claw.[1]
• The TBI crime-lab results on the Memphis samples.[10]
• Any NPS Discovery or medical examiner report naming a fentanyl analogue in a tablet sold as cat's claw. We searched the CFSRE's public alerts and the Tennessee and Utah warnings on October 13 and found none.[2][7]
• Shelf-clearing in other states in October. Buyers report inspectors emptying a Maryland gas station, stores in western Pennsylvania pulling kratom and cat's claw, and police in New Albany and Tupelo, Mississippi, confiscating tablets. Searches of state and local agency news pages on October 13 found no notice for any of them.

References

1. Greenbrier Police Seize More Than 350 Packages In Drug, Money-Laundering Investigation — Smokey Barn News, carrying the Greenbrier Police Department’s statement, 2026-09-05 (archived 2026-10-13)
2. Toxic Adulterant Alert: para-Fluorofentanyl Adulterating the Illicit Drug Supply (April 2024) — Center for Forensic Science Research and Education (CFSRE) with the Colombo Plan
3. Police seize 350+ packages in Greenbrier drug raid; warn public of these specific product labels — WSMV, 2026-09-06 (archived 2026-09-08)
4. cats claw containing fentanyl analogue (2026-09-09) — r/quittingcatsclaw — anecdotal report, not evidence
5. klaz contains fentanyl analong (2026-09-11) — r/CorynoxineBCatsClaw — anecdotal report, not evidence
6. Please read before taking another KLAZ… (2026-10-02) — r/quittingcatsclaw — anecdotal report, not evidence
7. What is ‘Cat’s Claw’ and why is Tennessee law enforcement warning public about it containing illegal compound? — WSMV, reporting the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, 2026-09-14 (archived 2026-10-13)
8. TBI warns mislabeled ‘Cat’s Claw’ products may contain illegal kratom in Tennessee — NewsChannel 9 (WTVC), 2026-09-14 (archived 2026-09-20)
9. Banned form of kratom being mixed into supplements, sold in gas stations across Tennessee — Action News 5, carrying WVLT, 2026-09-15 (archived 2026-09-19)
10. Kratom crackdown: Nearly 30k packages seized during raid, DA Mulroy says — Action News 5, 2026-10-01 (archived 2026-10-13)