Kratom's legal status isn't one answer - it's fifty.

At the federal level, kratom is legal and not a scheduled controlled substance, so whether you can legally buy, possess, or ship it comes down to your state, and increasingly your city or county. That patchwork changes constantly: states pass bans, adopt consumer protection rules, and occasionally reverse course, sometimes within the same year.

The one federal shift worth knowing is around 7-OH. Natural kratom leaf remains unscheduled, but in July 2026 the DEA began moving to place concentrated 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH) products into Schedule I. Traditional kratom leaf is not the target of that action.

At the state level:

Kratom falls into three broad buckets. A handful of states ban it outright, treating kratom and its alkaloids as controlled substances. A larger group regulates it under a Kratom Consumer Protection Act (KCPA), which keeps kratom legal for adults while requiring age limits, lab testing, honest labeling, and caps on 7-OH. The rest leave it legal by default, with no kratom-specific law. On top of that, some cities and counties impose their own bans even where the state allows it.

As of mid-2026, kratom is fully banned in a small number of states; including Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Indiana, Louisiana, Tennessee, Vermont, and Wisconsin, plus Washington, D.C. while roughly thirty states and D.C. regulate it in some form. Because these rules shift often, use the tracker below to check your state's current status, and always confirm with an official source before you buy, travel with, or ship kratom.