Is Kratom Legal in Arkansas?

What law bans kratom in Arkansas?

The Arkansas Department of Health’s List of Controlled Substances is the instrument, promulgated under Ark. Code Ann. 5-64-201 and 5-64-216. The department added kratom’s two main alkaloids to Schedule I, and the version of the rule that first carried them was filed in the November 2015 Arkansas Register as 007.07.15-002.

You’ll see both 2015 and 2016 given as the year Arkansas banned kratom, and you won’t find a bill number attached to either one. That is because no bill did it. Arkansas didn’t ban kratom by a vote of its legislature. The state’s health regulator put the alkaloids on the schedule, using authority the legislature had handed it decades before.

Both years are real and they describe different things. The schedule stamps every entry with the month the substance was placed on it, and mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine both read 11-2015. February 1, 2016 is the date the ban took force, and it is the date the General Assembly itself used in the findings it wrote into Senate Bill 534 in 2025.

That route also changes what undoing the ban would take. There are two doors, not one. The regulator can amend its own schedule. The legislature can pull the alkaloids off the list by statute. In 2025 the legislature tried the second door.

How does Arkansas classify kratom?

As an opium derivative. Both alkaloids sit in the narcotic drugs group of Schedule I, at entries 24 and 25, immediately after thebacon. Heroin is entry 11 in the same short list.

Banned states don’t agree about what kind of substance kratom is, and that disagreement is easy to miss because the practical result looks the same. Wisconsin files both alkaloids as stimulants, alongside methcathinone. Vermont files them as hallucinogenic drugs, in a state that has no Schedule I at all. Arkansas filed them as opium derivatives. Three states, three answers, one plant.

What the classification decides in Arkansas is narrower than it looks. Schedule I is what drives the penalty, not the subheading the alkaloids sit under. The subheading tells you how the state thinks about the leaf, which is worth knowing before you assume any other state’s ban works the same way.

What does the ban cover?

The law names the alkaloids, not the leaf. Mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine are kratom’s two main alkaloids, so anything that contains them is covered, and the ban reaches powder, capsules, tablets, extracts, drinks and tea alike.

Because kratom itself isn’t named in the schedule, people sometimes read the list and conclude the plant is fine. It isn’t. You can’t have the plant without the two things on the list.

Why did Arkansas ban kratom?

The General Assembly recorded the department’s justification in 2025: that the two alkaloids induce opioid-like effects when consumed, and that kratom has no medical use approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

There was a second reason, and it’s the one worth knowing. The legislature wrote that into its findings too. The FDA had encouraged every state to ban kratom, on the premise that the Drug Enforcement Administration would schedule it federally in 2016. Indiana had already banned it in 2012 and Wisconsin in 2014. Arkansas followed, then Alabama in May 2016 and Rhode Island in 2017.

The federal ban never came. On October 13, 2016, eight months after the Arkansas ban took force, the DEA withdrew its scheduling recommendation, citing insufficient evidence to meet the requirements for scheduling either alkaloid. Rhode Island ended its ban in April 2026. Arkansas has kept its.

What are the penalties for kratom in Arkansas?

Possession is a felony at any amount. Ark. Code Ann. 5-64-419 grades possession by schedule and by weight, and for a Schedule I substance that isn’t methamphetamine, fentanyl, heroin or cocaine, less than two grams is a Class D felony, two grams to under 28 grams is a Class C felony, and 28 grams to under 200 grams is a Class B felony.

The phrase to read closely in that statute is aggregate weight, including an adulterant or diluent. What gets weighed is the material, not the alkaloid inside it, and a standard retail package of kratom powder weighs several times the 28-gram figure.

There is no licensed channel, no store that can sell it lawfully, and no permit that makes it legal for personal use.

Did Arkansas try to repeal the ban?

Yes, and it cleared one chamber. Senate Bill 534 of the 2025 regular session would have removed both alkaloids from the controlled substances list and put an Arkansas Kratom Consumer Protection Act in their place.

The bill would have made processors register every product annually with the Department of Agriculture and file a certificate of analysis from an independent third-party laboratory. It barred adulterated and contaminated products and any synthetic alkaloid, held 7-hydroxymitragynine to one percent of a product’s alkaloid fraction, required labeling that gives serving size and servings per container, set a minimum purchase age lower than the 21 we require, and backed the whole of it with administrative fines.

The Senate passed it on April 7, 2025, by 24 to 5, with six members not voting. It went to the House Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee, which returned it three days later with a recommendation that it not pass. That motion killed it. The bill died in the House at sine die adjournment on May 5, 2025.

When could Arkansas change?

Not quickly. Arkansas holds its regular sessions in odd-numbered years. The sessions in between are fiscal sessions limited to appropriations, and taking up anything else there needs a two-thirds vote of both chambers.

That makes the regular session convening January 11, 2027 the next realistic opening. Bills can be pre-filed for it from November 16, 2026. Whether a successor to SB 534 is filed is up to the sponsors.

If one moves, the Arkansas General Assembly’s own site shows it first. Not a store’s website. Ours included.

Can you order kratom online in Arkansas?

No. The law applies where you are, not where the seller is. Once a package crosses the state line, Arkansas law is what applies to it.

We don’t ship to Arkansas. No kratom company that follows the law does.

Is kratom legal in the states around Arkansas?

In four of the six. Missouri, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas all allow it at the state level. Tennessee and Louisiana both ban it, Louisiana since August 1, 2025 and Tennessee since July 1, 2026.

You’ll find older pages saying every state bordering Arkansas allows kratom. That was true once. It stopped being true in 2025.

This is the part that catches people out. Arkansas sits on the interstate routes between states where kratom is sold openly, and carrying it through Arkansas is a crime in Arkansas whatever the law says at either end of the drive. Traveling with kratom covers that in full.

Can a city or county in Arkansas make it legal?

No. Counties and cities can pass their own rules on top of state law. What none of them can do is undo a state ban.

There’s no reliable way to track every local rule in the country, and we’re not going to pretend there is. If you’re reading this from another state, check your own city and county first.