Is Kratom Legal in Texas?

What law covers kratom in Texas?

Chapter 445 of the Health and Safety Code. Read the full text on the Texas Legislature’s statute site.

The chapter regulates kratom as a food. It defines kratom as any part of the leaf of Mitragyna speciosa. A kratom product is any food that contains kratom, including an extract, a capsule or a pill.

It’s a seller’s law. It tells processors and retailers what they may sell and how. It has no possession offense, and no Texas law lists kratom leaf as a controlled substance.

What does Texas require of a kratom seller?

Four things, and one age limit.

Every product must carry use directions and a recommended serving size on its label. A retailer may sell only products labeled that way.

No product may be adulterated with a dangerous ingredient or contaminated with a harmful one. That includes any controlled substance.

No product may contain synthetic alkaloids, including synthetic 7-hydroxymitragynine.

No product may hold more 7-hydroxymitragynine than 2 percent of its total alkaloids. Picture a product’s alkaloids split into a hundred equal shares. 7-OH can fill two of them, at most. 7-hydroxymitragynine, often shortened to 7-OH, is one of the leaf’s two main alkaloids.

Selling to anyone under 18 is a Class C misdemeanor. Every violation of the chapter carries a civil penalty of $250 for the first, $500 for the second and $1,000 for each one after that. Each day a violation goes on counts as a new one. The attorney general or a local prosecutor can sue to collect.

There’s one defense written into the law. A retailer isn’t liable for the civil penalty if it shows the violation was unintentional and came from relying in good faith on what its supplier told it.

The state health department adds one more layer. Its kratom guidance says anyone who makes, stores, wholesales or sells kratom products falls under the state’s food licensing and permit rules, unless an exemption applies.

How did Texas get its kratom law?

The first attempt came in 2021. House Bill 1097 carried the same name and nearly the same text. It passed the House and didn’t pass the Senate before the session ended.

Two years later, Senator Judith Zaffirini filed Senate Bill 497. Representative J. M. Lozano carried it in the House. The Senate passed it 28 to 2 on March 16, 2023. The House passed it 125 to 14 on April 21. Governor Greg Abbott neither signed nor vetoed it, and it became law without his signature on May 5, 2023. It took force on September 1, 2023.

The law sat at Chapter 444 for its first two years. House Bill 1620 of 2025 renumbered it as Chapter 445 on September 1, 2025. Only its section numbers changed. Older pages that cite Chapter 444 are describing the same law.

What happened to the 2025 bill to ban kratom in Texas?

It passed the Senate and died in a House committee without a hearing.

Senator Charles Perry filed Senate Bill 1868 on March 4, 2025, with Senator Royce West as coauthor. As filed, it was a ban. It would have added kratom to Penalty Group 1 of the Texas Controlled Substances Act, the group that holds cocaine and methamphetamine, and repealed the 2023 law. It also reached past kratom. It would have added tianeptine, an unapproved drug the bill’s author said was being sold in gas stations, to the same group. And it would have created a new chapter banning hallucinogenic mushrooms and plants.

The Senate State Affairs Committee rewrote it before it moved. The committee substitute kept kratom leaf legal and turned the bill into a much stricter set of rules. It kept tianeptine in Penalty Group 1, dropped the new mushroom chapter, and added two hallucinogenic mushroom compounds, ibotenic acid and muscimol, to Penalty Group 2. For kratom, the version the Senate passed on April 24, 2025 would have:

• raised the buying age to 21
• required every product to be tested by an accredited lab located in Texas
• added kratom alkaloids taken out of the leaf, and synthetic versions of them, to Penalty Group 1
• cut the 7-OH limit from 2 percent of total alkaloids to 0.1 percent, a twentyfold tightening
• limited packaged products to raw or dried leaf, ground leaf, leaf powder and clear capsules of leaf powder, which would have taken extracts, tablets and drinks off the shelf
• banned kratom sold for smoking or vaping, sold within 1,000 feet of a school, or sold in any store that also sells hemp products, tobacco, e-cigarettes or alcohol
• raised the civil penalties tenfold, to $2,500, $5,000 and $10,000, and removed the good-faith defense

The House referred it to the Committee on Public Health on April 28, 2025. The committee never scheduled a hearing on it. The regular session ended on June 2, 2025, with the bill where it was sent. The House record doesn’t say why. Versions of the same bill were filed in both special sessions that summer, as House Bill 291 and House Bill 227. Neither one became law.

Does Texas law link kratom with kava?

Yes, in one place. Senate Bill 2024, the 2025 vape law, took force on September 1, 2025. It made it a Class A misdemeanor to market or sell any vape product that contains, or is marketed as containing, kratom, kava, mushrooms, tianeptine, cannabinoids or alcohol.

The vape law doesn’t reach kratom powder or kratom capsules. It covers products made to be vaped. Its list shows how Texas lawmakers grouped these plants and products in the same session they debated SB 1868. One piece of that failed bill, the ban on kratom for vaping, became law anyway, through a different bill.

How is Texas enforcing its kratom law?

Mostly against 7-OH products, and through the courts.

On September 2, 2025, the Department of State Health Services issued a health advisory warning people away from products containing 7-OH. The agency drew a line between kratom products, which it said typically carry 7-OH at low levels, and semi-synthetic or synthetic 7-OH products, which it said can run as high as 98 percent.

Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office then went to court. On February 9, 2026, it sued a group of kratom retailers in Midlothian, alleging they sold products where 7-OH made up 86 to 96 percent of the alkaloids. The office later secured a temporary injunction that stopped those sales. On April 21, 2026, it sued two online sellers based in California on the same kind of allegation. It said they shipped such products into Texas while their websites said they didn’t. Both suits allege breaches of the 2 percent limit and of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

We have never sold 7-OH products and we do not defend them.

In August 2026, the health department briefed the House Committee on Public Health, the committee where SB 1868 stopped. Its slides counted 1,034 poison center calls involving kratom or 7-OH from January 1, 2023 through July 31, 2026. Five involved a death. Calls the agency tied to 7-OH rose from 3 in 2024 to 198 in the first seven months of 2026. The kratom total includes those 7-OH calls.

Could Texas kratom law change?

Yes. The Texas Legislature meets in regular session every other year, and the next one opens in January 2027. A bill like SB 1868 can be filed again then. The governor can also call a special session at any time and choose its subjects.

Federal action sits above all of this, and it reaches every state at once. Our page on whether kratom is legal federally tracks what the DEA and FDA have done.

If a Texas bill moves, the legislature’s own site shows it first. Not a store’s website. Ours included.

Can you order kratom online in Texas?

Yes. Chapter 445 covers anyone who sells kratom products to Texas consumers, in a store or online. The attorney general’s April 2026 suit was against two sellers based in California.

We’re based in Arlington, Texas, and more of our orders ship to Texas than to any other state. We verify age at checkout. Every lab report we publish for our Whole Earth line measures 7-OH, so the 2 percent rule is something you can check yourself on our lab tests page. Two other brands we carry are made in Texas: 1836 Kratom in Pflugerville (just outside Austin), and KR8OM in Arlington and Fort Worth.

Is kratom legal in the states around Texas?

In two of the four. Oklahoma and New Mexico allow kratom at the state level. Louisiana and Arkansas ban it.

That makes the drive east the one that catches people out. Kratom bought legally in Texas becomes possession in Louisiana the moment you cross the line. Arkansas works the same way. The law reaches you where you are, not where you bought it. Traveling with kratom covers what that means on a drive and in an airport.

Can a city or county in Texas ban kratom?

Two Texas cities have. Anna banned the sale of kratom inside its city limits on March 12, 2024. Bridgeport passed the same kind of ordinance on August 11, 2025. Both ban selling kratom, not having it. We don’t ship to either city, and our shipping page keeps the full list of places we don’t ship.

This page covers state law. Cities and counties can add rules of their own, and those rules differ and change.

There’s no reliable way to track every local rule in the country, and we are not going to pretend there is. Check your own city and county before you buy, carry or travel.