On April 3, Rhode Island became the first state to reverse a kratom ban, licensing sales to adults 21 and older. Nine days earlier, Connecticut classified kratom and 7-hydroxymitragynine as Schedule I substances and ordered them off shelves. Two states, 100 miles apart, reaching opposite conclusions in the same month. That is not a functioning regulatory system. That is a coin flip, and people's health is riding on it.
Federal scheduling of kratom and its derivatives is overdue. The FDA recommended Schedule I classification for 7-OH in July 2025. The DEA has done nothing. That inaction has created a vacuum where 7 states ban kratom outright, Rhode Island now licenses it, California warns it's illegal in foods and supplements, and Ohio's emergency ban on synthetic kratom hangs in limbo pending hearings. Consumers in bordering states face completely different legal realities for the same product. No serious person can defend this as a system.
The "Natural Leaf" Argument Has a Contamination Problem
Kratom advocates, Kai Brighton among them, draw a sharp line between the natural leaf and synthetic 7-OH. I understand the instinct. The problem is that the commercial kratom supply does not respect that line.
A 2019 analysis in Drug and Alcohol Dependence (n=30 commercial products) found that mitragynine content varied by over 100-fold between products, and several contained undisclosed alkaloids. The FDA's 7 warning letters to kratom companies cited adulteration and deceptive marketing. When you buy kratom at a gas station in an unregulated state, you have no idea what concentration of which alkaloids you're ingesting. Rhode Island's new law tries to address this with purity standards and training requirements. Good. But Rhode Island is 1 state out of 50, and its first licenses haven't even been issued yet.
Without federal standards, "pure kratom" is a marketing claim, not a verified fact.
No Approved Medical Use Is Not a Technicality
Connecticut DCP Commissioner Bryan Cafferelli said it plainly on March 23: kratom substances "have no approved medical use" and "have a high potential for misuse." That language tracks Schedule I criteria exactly. Kratom proponents counter that the substance helps with opioid withdrawal and chronic pain. I want that to be true. Millions of Americans need better options for both.
But wanting something to be true is not evidence. A 2020 systematic review in Pharmacotherapy (n=13 studies, all observational or case reports) found no randomized controlled trials supporting kratom for opioid withdrawal. Zero. The therapeutic claims rest entirely on self-report and anecdote. Meanwhile, case reports of kratom-associated hepatotoxicity, seizures, and deaths keep accumulating. A 2019 CDC analysis identified 91 kratom-associated deaths over an 18-month period, though most involved polysubstance use.
I'll grant the fair point: scheduling kratom could cut off access for people who genuinely use it to manage pain or withdrawal, and that's a real cost. But the asymmetry matters here. Recommending an unregulated substance with no controlled trial evidence as an opioid alternative is exactly the kind of harm I cannot endorse. If kratom has therapeutic value, prove it through the same FDA approval process every other drug must survive. Scheduling does not kill research. It structures it.
The Kratom Consumer Protection Act, which would impose testing and quality controls without scheduling, sounds reasonable in theory. In practice, it creates a framework for selling a pharmacologically active substance with opioid-receptor affinity as if it were a dietary supplement. We tried that approach with ephedra. People died before the FDA finally banned it in 2004.
Rhode Island's experiment will generate useful data. I hope it works. But hoping is not a federal regulatory strategy, and the 9-day gap between Connecticut's ban and Rhode Island's legalization tells you everything about where we are: nowhere coherent. The FDA made its recommendation 9 months ago. The DEA should act on it.
