There is no national kratom law in the United States, and there never has been one. As of July 30, 2026 what exists instead is a patchwork: a small number of states prohibit kratom outright, a larger group regulates it under consumer-protection statutes, a fast-growing group has moved specifically against 7-hydroxymitragynine without touching leaf kratom at all, and some have done nothing. This post explains the shape of that patchwork rather than pretending to be a chart, because the honest position is that any state-by-state list goes stale faster than anyone updates it.
Read this as orientation, not as an answer about your address. Verify locally before you buy, ship, or stock anything.
Quick Answer: The Four Kinds of State Regime
| Regime | What it looks like | Practical effect |
|---|---|---|
| Outright prohibition | Kratom, or its principal alkaloids, placed on the state's own controlled substances schedule | Sale is a criminal offense, often a felony. Possession may be too. "It is not federally scheduled" is not a defense. |
| Consumer-protection regulation | Age limits (usually 21+), mandatory labeling, alkaloid disclosure, limits on concentration, sometimes product registration | Legal to sell, but only if the product and its label comply. A compliant product in one state can be non-compliant across the border. |
| 7-OH-specific action | The state targets concentrated or isolated 7-OH, or products above a stated percentage, and leaves leaf kratom alone | The legal question becomes a laboratory question. What is actually in the article decides the answer. |
| Age-only or unregulated | A purchase age and nothing else, or no specific statute at all | Broadest availability. Federal food-and-drug authority still applies regardless. |
Why There Is No Single National Rule
Controlled substances law in the United States is dual-sovereign. The federal Controlled Substances Act runs on one track, and every state maintains its own schedules on a parallel track. A state can place a substance on its schedule that the federal government has never touched, and several states have done exactly that with kratom.
The second reason the map moves unevenly is that states delegate the power differently. In some, a change requires a bill through a full legislative session, which means months of visible warning. In others a Board of Pharmacy can amend a schedule by rule, or an attorney general can issue an emergency rule that takes effect on signature. Those two clocks run at completely different speeds, and most published guides only watch the slow one.
Prohibition States, and Why That Group Stopped Being Stable
For most of the last decade the prohibition group was small and static. Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin had all placed kratom or its main alkaloids on their schedules, and the District of Columbia restricted it. That list held still long enough that people began treating it as permanent.
2026 ended that. Connecticut's ban took effect on March 25, 2026, and the state attorney general wrote to known distributors rather than waiting for them to notice. Kansas and Tennessee both moved on July 1, 2026, and in both states selling is charged as a felony rather than as an infraction. A Tennessee gas-station employee was arrested three weeks after the effective date. On the same day Connecticut's ban landed, Alabama's attorney general issued a statewide cease-and-desist reaching licensed retailers across the state.
The pattern worth noticing is which tier gets enforced against. These are not raids on factories. They reach the businesses that possess and sell, and a Kansas county prosecutor said publicly on day one that retailers were the first enforcement focus. Texas took a different route in April 2026, suing two California online sellers over shipments into the state, with the central allegation being that the sellers' own compliance claims on their own websites were false.
Regulation States: Legal, but Conditionally
A larger group of states took the regulatory route instead of prohibition. The common features are a minimum purchase age of 21, a requirement that labels disclose alkaloid content, a prohibition on adulterating the product with other substances, and in several states a cap on 7-OH expressed as a percentage of total alkaloids.
The trap here is assuming these statutes are interchangeable. They are not. Disclosure requirements, concentration caps and packaging rules differ meaningfully from state to state, and a product built to satisfy one state's rules can fail another's on a technicality that has nothing to do with what is in the bottle. "Legal in regulated states" is not a coherent category, and any guide that treats it as one is flattening the thing that actually matters.
7-OH Is Increasingly a Separate Question From Kratom
The most important recent shift is that states have begun separating concentrated 7-hydroxymitragynine from leaf kratom. Florida acted first by emergency rule in August 2025 and expanded the rule on June 22, 2026. Ohio's Board of Pharmacy rule became permanent on May 19, 2026. Both arrived through agency channels rather than the legislature, which is precisely why they are missing from so many published maps.
Once a state draws its line at a concentration rather than at a plant, the compliance question stops being legal research and becomes analytical chemistry. You cannot answer it from a product page. You answer it from a certificate of analysis, which is why we publish the certificates for what we carry rather than summarizing them. If you have not read one before, our walkthrough on how to read a COA covers what the numbers actually mean and, just as importantly, what a panel does not cover.
Why Vendor State-by-State Guides Are Frequently Wrong
Almost every seller in this category publishes a color-coded map. Treat all of them as unreliable. Six recurring failure modes:
- They are stale. Most were written once and never revisited. A map with no visible last-reviewed date is telling you something.
- They confuse bills with laws. A bill introduced is not a bill passed, and a bill passed is not a bill in effect. All three often get the same color.
- They miss agency action entirely. Board of Pharmacy rules, attorney general emergency rules and consumer-protection enforcement never appear in a legislative bill tracker. Several of the most consequential 2025 and 2026 changes came through exactly those channels.
- They ignore the local layer. City and county ordinances exist and are rarely reflected on any national map. Baltimore brought an ordinance-based action in July 2026. Municipal rules are real law where you live.
- They collapse kratom and 7-OH into one question. These are increasingly governed by different rules within the same state, and a single green square cannot represent both.
- The publisher has a commercial interest in the answer. The company telling you your state is fine is the company that wants to ship there.
We do not publish a state-by-state chart, and that is the reason. We could not keep one accurate, and an inaccurate one is worse than none at all. The same principle runs through how we screen the brands we carry.
What Federal Scheduling Does and Does Not Do to State Law
On July 1, 2026 the DEA filed two Notices of Intent to temporarily schedule under 21 U.S.C. 811(h), published in the Federal Register on July 6, 2026. FR Doc 2026-13580 covers 7-OH above a specified threshold of 0.050% w/w or 1.00 mg per article. FR Doc 2026-13581 covers mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, MGM-15 and MGM-16 with no threshold at all. The order may take effect on or after August 5, 2026, on the date it publishes, and under 811(h)(6) it is not subject to judicial review. The mechanics are covered in DEA temporary scheduling explained.
Federal scheduling adds a layer. It does not repeal, preempt or override anything a state has done. Four combinations are all possible at once:
- Below the federal threshold and lawful in your state.
- Below the federal threshold but prohibited by your state anyway, because state schedules are independent.
- Federally scheduled while your state has taken no action, in which case federal law still applies in full.
- Prohibited under both, which is where most of the concentrated-7-OH market lands.
Some states adopt federal schedule changes automatically by statute. Others require their own rulemaking. Do not assume either way about your own state without checking, and read how to read a Federal Register scheduling notice before relying on anyone's summary of what the federal order covers.
How to Actually Check Your Own State
This takes roughly fifteen minutes and beats any map:
- Search your state's controlled substances schedule directly, on the state's own website, for both "kratom" and "mitragynine".
- Check your state Board of Pharmacy for rules and emergency rules. This is the channel most often missed.
- Check the attorney general's consumer alerts and press releases for the last twenty-four months.
- Search the legislature's bill tracker for pending measures, and confirm the effective date of anything already passed.
- Check your city and county code.
- If real money or inventory is at stake, retain an attorney licensed in that state. Nothing on any retailer's blog, this one included, substitutes for that.
Where Cat's Claw Sits in All of This
Cat's claw (Uncaria tomentosa) is a different plant from kratom (Mitragyna speciosa) and is not named in the federal scheduling action. That distinction is real, and we explain it in cat's claw versus kratom versus 7-OH. It is not a universal permission slip. States can regulate any ingredient they choose, and federal food-and-drug authority applies to everything on a shelf regardless of scheduling status.
We are a distributor and retailer. We do not manufacture or formulate anything. We carry other companies' brands, we screen what we stock, and we publish the supplier certificates so you can check our work. Those certificates report non-detect for 7-OH, mitragynine, speciociliatine, speciogynine, paynantheine, corynantheidine and mitraphylline. They do not test for mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, MGM-15, MGM-16 or corynoxine B, so we claim nothing about those compounds. What we stock is in the cat's claw collection.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which states ban kratom in 2026?
The long-standing group is Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin, with the District of Columbia restricting it, and Connecticut, Kansas and Tennessee joined during 2026. Treat that as a snapshot dated July 30, 2026, not a live list, and verify against your own state's schedule before acting on it.
Does federal scheduling make kratom legal in states that banned it?
No. Federal and state schedules are independent. A federal action changes nothing about a state prohibition, and a state ban remains fully enforceable regardless of what the DEA does.
Is a product legal if it ships from a state where it is lawful?
Not necessarily. States generally apply their law to sales made into the state, and Texas sued two out-of-state online sellers in April 2026 on precisely that basis. Where the seller sits is not the controlling question.
Do state rules apply to cat's claw products?
They can. Cat's claw is not kratom and is not named in the federal action, but state consumer-protection and labeling law applies to supplements generally, and a few states regulate by product characteristic rather than by plant name. Check the composition, not the category name.
Why will you not just tell me whether I can order?
Because we would be guessing, and a wrong yes from us creates real exposure for you. We will tell you what we stock and publish the certificates for it. What applies at your address is a question for your state's own materials, and for a lawyer if the stakes justify one. More on our general approach is in our FAQ.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. For adults 21+. Legality depends on the specific formulation and applicable state law — check the rules where you live. Nothing here is legal advice.