Is Kratom Legal in Vermont?

What law bans kratom in Vermont?

The Regulated Drug Rule, written by the Vermont Department of Health.

Two instruments work together here, and most write-ups cite the wrong one on its own.

The rule is the Regulated Drug Rule, published by the Department of Health and adopted under Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 18 §§ 4201 and 4202. It is the list. Mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine are both named in it.

The statute is Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 18 § 4205. One sentence long, written in 1967, it makes it unlawful for any person to manufacture, possess, have under his or her control, sell, prescribe, administer, dispense, or compound any regulated drug.

The rule decides what a regulated drug is. The statute decides what happens to you for having one. Cite § 4205 by itself and you’ve named a prohibition that doesn’t mention kratom.

Is kratom a Schedule I drug in Vermont?

No. Vermont has no Schedule I.

This is the most repeated error about Vermont kratom law. Page after page reports that the state placed kratom on its Schedule I list. There is no such list to be placed on.

Vermont doesn’t use the five-schedule structure most states copied from federal law. It sorts substances into four groups by what they’re thought to do: stimulant drugs, depressant drugs, narcotic drugs, and hallucinogenic drugs. Kratom’s two main alkaloids sit in the fourth group, § 7.0 of the rule, alongside psilocybin, mescaline, peyote and lysergic acid diethylamide.

That placement isn’t cosmetic. It is what sets the penalties, and Vermont’s penalties for that group are built in a way no other banned state uses.

When did Vermont ban kratom?

Nobody can point to one date, and the reason is the way it was done.

An agency rule doesn’t get signed, doesn’t get a bill number, and doesn’t record which amendment added which substance. What it carries is a history of its own effective dates. The rule took effect in July 1993 and has been amended seven times since, in 1996, 2006, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2016 and 2017. The version the Department publishes took effect on July 15, 2019.

The year quoted for Vermont is 2016, and the amendment effective January 1, 2016 is where it comes from. We can’t confirm from the instrument that the alkaloids went in at that amendment rather than an earlier one, so we won’t state it as a fact. What the rule shows on its face is that both are in it now.

Anyone telling you Vermont’s legislature banned kratom in a particular month is reading somebody else’s summary. The legislature never voted on it.

What does the ban cover?

The alkaloids, and anything containing them.

The rule names mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine. The word kratom appears nowhere in it. It doesn’t need to. Powder, capsules, tablets, extracts, drinks and tea all contain those compounds, so the rule reaches all of them.

People read a list with no mention of kratom and conclude the leaf is fine. It isn’t. You can’t have the leaf without the two things on the list.

What are the penalties for kratom in Vermont?

Possession is a crime. Selling is worse. Above the bottom tier the numbers climb faster than in any other banned state.

The section that applies is Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 18 § 4235, hallucinogenic drugs. At the bottom tier, possession carries up to one year and a fine of up to $2,000.

Dispensing carries up to three years and a fine of up to $25,000. Selling carries up to five years and the same fine ceiling.

Above that, § 4235 escalates three times, at 10, at 100 and at 1,000. The top possession tier is up to 15 years and a fine of up to $500,000. The top selling tier is the same 15 years and the same half-million-dollar ceiling.

Here’s the part nobody writes about. Those tiers aren’t counted in grams. They’re counted in units of the drug, and § 4235 doesn’t define what one unit is. It directs the Department of Health to set that by rule.

The rule sets threshold amounts for 45 substances. Neither mitragynine nor 7-hydroxymitragynine is one of them.

Has anyone tried to undo it?

Three times, by two different routes, and none of them would have finished the job.

2023, the agency route. The American Kratom Association petitioned the Department of Health to take both alkaloids off the rule. By the association’s own account, the Department granted the petition on March 1, 2023 and said it would begin rulemaking. What is checkable is the rule itself, and the version in force when this page was last checked lists both compounds. No amendment removing them has been adopted.

2025, the legislative route, and it was tried in both chambers. House Bill 416, the Kratom Consumer Protection Act, was introduced on February 27, 2025 by Representatives Troy Headrick of Burlington and James Gregoire of Fairfield. It would have made processors and distributors register every product annually with the Department of Health, back each registration with a certificate of analysis from an accredited independent lab, and carry a set label. Selling an unregistered product drew a fine of up to $5,000, twice that on a second offense, and a two-year bar on selling at the third.

H.416 was read once, referred to the House Committee on Human Services, and never came back out. Its own effective date, July 1, 2025, went by while it sat there.

A Senate companion carried the same text word for word. S.121 was introduced by Senators Tanya Vyhovsky, Martine Gulick and Rebecca White, read the first time on March 14, 2025, and sent to the Committee on Health and Welfare. Neither bill was enacted.

Vermont runs two-year bienniums, so both stayed alive through the 2026 session on paper. The General Assembly adjourned for good on May 29, 2026 and they died with the biennium. Several pages describe H.416 as pending. It isn’t.

Would the Kratom Consumer Protection Act have made kratom legal in Vermont?

No, neither bill would have, and every write-up of them we have read says otherwise.

Both add the same new subchapter to chapter 82 of Title 18, which is the labeling chapter. The ban lives in chapter 84 and in the Department’s rule. Neither bill amends chapter 84, neither mentions the Regulated Drug Rule, and neither directs the Department to change it.

Their own enforcement section points the other way. Section 4095(c) would make it an offense, carrying up to three years, to sell a kratom product containing “a regulated drug as defined in section 4201 of this title.” Mitragynine is a regulated drug under that definition. Every kratom product contains mitragynine.

Read as written, the act would have built a registration and labeling system for products that remained illegal to sell. You’ll see it called the bill that would make Vermont the first state to reverse a ban by legislation. That is not what the text does.

A bill that actually reopened Vermont would have to reach chapter 84 or the rule. Neither of these goes near either.

Could Vermont’s ban change?

More easily than in most banned states, and that’s worth knowing.

Everywhere else on this list, undoing the ban means passing a bill. Alabama and Kansas wrote the alkaloids into statute. Indiana buried them in a definition. In Vermont the names sit in an agency rule, and the agency that wrote it can amend it without a single vote. That door was opened once already and has stood open since 2023.

The legislative door is open too. The 2027-2028 biennium convenes in January 2027, and a successor to H.416 can be filed then, though it would have to be drafted to reach chapter 84 or the rule rather than sitting beside them. Vermont has no Kratom Consumer Protection Act and never has.

If either door moves, the state shows it first. The Department posts proposed rules and comment periods on its own rules pages, and the General Assembly posts every bill. Not a store’s website. Ours included.

Can you order kratom online in Vermont?

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

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

Is kratom legal in the states around Vermont?

In two of the three. It was all three until August 2026.

New Hampshire and New York both allow it at the state level. Massachusetts banned it on August 28, 2026, by emergency order of its Commissioner of Public Health, so Vermont now borders a state that arrived where Vermont is by a route Vermont has never used.

The difference between the two bans is worth holding onto. Vermont’s sits in a Department of Health rule with no end date written into it, and it can only come off the way it went on, by rulemaking. The Massachusetts order caps at one year and expires on its own. Both are agency acts rather than statutes, and neither took a legislative vote.

New York is the one that changed before that. In December 2025 the governor signed two acts, one setting a minimum purchase age of 21 and one requiring a warning label on any kratom product made, distributed or sold in the state.

New Hampshire sets no minimum purchase age at the state level at all, and its towns have filled the gap themselves. Franklin banned kratom outright in 2019. Nashua set an age limit of 21 in 2025. That is the clearest example anywhere near Vermont of how far state law and local law can diverge.

Crossing into Vermont with a lawful purchase from either of the two is possession in Vermont. Traveling with kratom covers what that means on a drive and in an airport.

Can a town in Vermont make it legal?

No. Towns and cities can add rules on top of state law. What none of them can do is undo a state ban.

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