Is Kratom Legal in the US?

Is kratom legal under federal law?

Yes. Kratom isn’t a controlled substance under federal law, and it has never been scheduled. No federal statute makes it illegal to buy it, to have it, or to ship it across a state line.

Three laboratory-made compounds built from a kratom alkaloid were placed in Schedule I in August 2026. None of them occurs naturally in the plant, and none of them is kratom. A second federal action, written as a concentration threshold rather than as a plant, had not issued at the last check above. Is kratom legal federally lays the whole federal record out in order, with the government document behind each step.

What federal law doesn’t do is set a standard for kratom. The FDA hasn’t approved it for any use. There are no national rules for how it’s tested, what goes on the label, or what’s allowed to be in the product.

That gap is why states write their own rules. It is also why those rules don’t match each other.

Which states ban kratom?

Ten states ban kratom: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Wisconsin.

These ten bans do not all work the same way, and the difference is not a technicality. Six of them came from a legislature. Four came from a state agency, which means no vote was held and no legislator’s name is on them.

The six that came from a legislature. Alabama has banned it since May 10, 2016, under Ala. Code section 20-2-23. Indiana has the oldest kratom ban in the country that anyone can put a date on, in force since March 15, 2012, under Ind. Code section 35-31.5-2-321, which reaches kratom by calling its alkaloids synthetic drugs. Wisconsin followed on April 25, 2014, under Wis. Stat. section 961.14(7), and it is the only banned state that files them as stimulants. Louisiana banned it on August 1, 2025, under La. Stat. Ann. section 40:966.1. Tennessee and Kansas both landed on July 1, 2026, Tennessee under Public Chapter 950 and Kansas under K.S.A. 65-4105.

The four that came from an agency. Arkansas has banned it since February 1, 2016, under Ark. Admin. Code section 007.07.2, and no bill number exists because the Department of Health amended the schedule on its own authority. Vermont banned it by Department of Health rule, Code Vt. R. 13-140-008, and the rule does not record which amendment added the alkaloids, so no in-force date can be proven from the instrument itself. Vermont also has no Schedule I; it sorts substances by type and files kratom’s alkaloids as hallucinogenic drugs. Connecticut banned it on March 25, 2026, under Conn. Agencies Regs. section 21a-243-7, where the legislature ordered the scheduling and the Department of Consumer Protection chose the schedule. Massachusetts banned it on August 28, 2026, under 105 CMR 726.000, an emergency order signed by one official that took effect after a fourteen-day notice period and expires unless something replaces it.

That split is worth carrying with you. A ban written by a legislature usually needs another legislature to undo it. A ban written by an agency can be undone by that agency, and it can also arrive with no warning.

You’ll see other counts on other sites. Six, seven, eight and nine all turn up, usually because the page was written before Louisiana, Connecticut, Kansas, Tennessee or Massachusetts, and never updated. Ten is the number as of the date at the top of this page.

Where is kratom legal?

At the state level, kratom is legal in most of the rest of the country:

Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Rhode Island is worth a note. It banned kratom, then reversed. The Rhode Island Kratom Act took effect on April 1, 2026, and set up a regulated market in place of the ban. A standing ban undone by the legislature that wrote it is not something any other state on this page has done.

North Dakota gets read as a second case of the same thing, and it is not. What ended there was a temporary emergency order, declared on August 3, 2026 and rescinded on September 4, 2026 when the Governor signed a regulation bill. Synthetic derivatives are banned there outright, natural leaf is restricted to 21 and over, and sales stay prohibited until the state writes its licensing rules. That is not a market reopening, and it is why North Dakota is in neither list above.

A state missing from both lists above is a state whose position we are not prepared to state as of the last check above. Sometimes the law there is genuinely ambiguous, and until something is defined we do not know. That is the honest answer, and we would rather leave a gap than put a state in the wrong column. Check your own legislature.

What is a Kratom Consumer Protection Act?

A Kratom Consumer Protection Act, or KCPA, is the law that makes kratom legal in a state as long as certain rules are followed. A minimum age. What has to appear on the label. What isn’t allowed in the product. Sell it any other way and you’re breaking the law, even though the plant itself is legal there.

These laws are often how a ban gets avoided. A state takes up a bill to ban kratom, and what comes out the other end is a KCPA instead. Rhode Island went further and used one to undo a ban it already had.

Where there’s no law of either kind, nobody is checking. The only thing between you and a bad product is the company selling it to you.

How old do you have to be to buy kratom?

Ours is 21, everywhere. Where a state sets a minimum age, that age isn’t the same in every state.

You have to be 21 to buy from us, in every state we ship to, and that doesn’t move because a state’s rule reads differently. We’d rather lose a sale than sell to somebody underage.

Is kratom legal in my city or county?

Maybe not, even where the state allows it. State law is one layer. It is not the only one. Counties, cities, and parishes can pass their own kratom rules, and some have.

There’s no reliable way to track every local rule in the country. We’re not going to pretend there is. This page covers state law.

Check your own city and county before you buy, carry, or travel with kratom.

Traveling with kratom matters more here than people expect. The law changes the moment you cross a state line. It applies to you where you are, not where you came from. That includes an airport you’re only passing through.

Can you order kratom online in a state that bans it?

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

We can’t ship to the ten states above. We also ship inside the United States only, and that’s our own choice, not the law. Kratom is legal in plenty of countries we don’t ship to.

If we cannot deliver to your address, checkout will tell you before you pay.

How do you check your own state’s law?

Two sources settle it, and neither is a store’s website. You shouldn’t have to take our word for this. Vendor lists go stale fast, ours included.

The first is your state’s controlled substances schedule. It is published online, and it names every substance the state has scheduled.

The second is your state legislature’s own site. It carries the text of any bill that’s moving and tells you where it stands.

If a state’s status has just changed, the legislature’s site shows it first. A store’s website is always behind.

How we check these pages

Every page in this section is written from the law itself, not from another store’s list.

For each state we read two things: the statute or regulation that does the banning, and the state legislature’s own record of the bill behind it. Where a state agency has taken action, we read what the agency published. Those sources are named on the page, so you can go look at them without taking our word for anything.

Theron Rodriguez writes and checks these pages. He founded Whole Earth Gifts in 2020, his name is on every one of them, and there’s no committee to hide behind if one of them is wrong.

We go back through them on a quarterly cycle, a few states at a time. Each page carries the date it was last checked. If we check a page and the law hasn’t moved, the date moves and the page doesn’t. If the law has moved, the page changes with it.

Where a state is actively moving, we check it more often than that. A page that says one thing while a legislature is voting on another is worse than no page.

Ten states and their laws are more than any one page can keep perfect. If you find something out of date here, tell us and we’ll fix it.

Is Kentucky’s ban final?

Not yet. Kratom is legal in Kentucky as of the date at the top of this page. A ban was enacted in April 2026, and as the law stands it comes into force on July 1, 2027. The version of KRS 217.2202 that takes effect that day is published separately from the one in force now, which is why most sources carry a different date.

Take that date as the current plan, not a done deal. Kentucky is still arguing about this one, and the argument isn’t over. Lawmakers can move the date, narrow what the ban covers, swap it for a different law, or repeal it before it ever starts. Any of that can happen. Some of it probably will.

What we can tell you is what’s on the books at the last check above. Kratom is legal in Kentucky, and the law as written ends that on July 1, 2027. Nothing is final until it’s in force, and nothing is safe to assume until it is. If you’re in Kentucky, watch the legislature, not a store’s website. Ours included.