The Kratom Consumer Protection Act is a model state law that keeps kratom legal for adults while setting safety, labeling, age-verification, and testing standards for the products sold in a state. Roughly a dozen states have passed their own versions. Because the federal government has never approved kratom for any medical use and the FDA treats any dietary supplement containing it as adulterated, these state laws fill a regulatory gap: they screen out contaminated, mislabeled, and synthetically concentrated products without banning the plant itself.1FDA. FDA and Kratom
What the Law Requires
Each state writes its own version, but the core provisions trace back to a common model promoted by industry advocates. The requirements group into four areas: what can be in the product, what has to be on the label, who can buy it, and what processors must do before putting anything on a shelf.
Alkaloid Caps and Banned Ingredients
The signature provision caps 7-hydroxymitragynine at no more than 2% of a product’s total alkaloid content. That ceiling tracks the trace levels found in unprocessed leaf and effectively bans the concentrated extracts that have driven most federal enforcement activity. For scale, Texas investigators found products with 7-OH levels between 86% and 96% of total alkaloids, roughly fifty times the legal limit.
Processors also cannot use synthetic mitragynine or synthetic 7-hydroxymitragynine, cannot blend kratom with non-kratom substances in ways that alter its strength enough to harm a consumer, and cannot sell any product that contains a federally controlled substance.
Labeling
Every KCPA requires the package to disclose, at minimum, the amounts of mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine in the product. Many states add a full ingredient list, the manufacturer’s name and contact information, and batch-level traceability. A buyer should be able to read the label and know what the product contains, who made it, and which production run it came from.
Age Restrictions
Every version bars sales to minors. The threshold is 18 in some states and 21 in others. Retailers must verify age at the point of sale the same way they do for tobacco or alcohol. In states that set the limit at 21, the restriction reaches possession, not just purchase.
Registration and Third-Party Testing
Processors must register with a state agency, typically a department of agriculture or health, before selling. Fees range from a few hundred dollars for annual renewal to a one-time application fee of $1,500 or more.
Registered processors must then submit finished products to independent, third-party laboratories. The tests confirm compliance with the 2% cap on 7-hydroxymitragynine and screen for heavy metals, microbial pathogens such as salmonella, foreign matter, and in some states pesticides and residual solvents. The FDA has warned the public about kratom contaminated with salmonella and heavy metals, so the testing addresses documented risks.1FDA. FDA and Kratom Certificates of analysis have to be kept on file and produced for regulators on request. Losing those records can be enough to lose a registration.
States That Have Adopted the Act
Arizona and Oregon were among the earliest adopters and set the template others have followed. Roughly a dozen states now have their own versions, including Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia. Each state adapts the model to its own administrative structure. Texas calls its version the Kratom Consumer Health and Safety Protection Act and routes enforcement through the attorney general’s office rather than a department of agriculture.
Adoption has accelerated as federal action against concentrated 7-OH products has intensified. Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania all had active KCPA bills in their 2025–2026 legislative sessions. Pennsylvania’s Senate Bill 233, for example, would set the purchase age at 21 and route oversight through the Department of Health. Not every pending bill will pass, but the trend favors more adoption rather than less.
States Where Kratom Is Banned
The KCPA does not apply everywhere, and a reader who assumes “legal with rules” nationwide will get this wrong. As of 2025, seven states and Washington, D.C., ban kratom outright: Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island. Rhode Island’s ban was set to expire in April 2026, and the state has considered replacing it with a consumer protection framework. In a state that has banned kratom, possession or sale carries the same legal consequences as any other prohibited-substance violation in that jurisdiction.
Local Bans and Preemption
Even in states where kratom is legal, cities and counties can impose their own restrictions unless the state KCPA includes a preemption clause overriding local regulation. Dozens of municipalities across the country have used that authority to ban kratom sales, including cities in California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Mississippi.
Where a state KCPA contains preemption language, the state law is the final word and local governments cannot add their own bans or extra requirements. Where it does not, cities and counties keep broad police powers to prohibit kratom within their borders. In Washington, where no state kratom law has passed, individual cities have enacted outright sales bans. For a retailer with locations in more than one city, a preemption clause is the difference between one compliance framework and a dozen. Checking local ordinances matters as much as knowing the state rule.
Penalties for Violations
Penalty structures vary by state but tend to escalate predictably. A first offense for a labeling or registration violation is usually a petty offense or infraction with a fine in the range of $200 to $500. A second or subsequent offense typically pushes the fine ceiling to $1,000 or more and can trigger revocation of a product’s registration for at least a year.
Public-safety violations carry heavier consequences. Selling adulterated kratom or knowingly distributing products that violate safety standards is charged as a misdemeanor in most KCPA states. Arizona classifies such violations as class 2 misdemeanors; Florida treats them as second-degree misdemeanors. Georgia’s law goes the furthest: a processor who knowingly or with criminal negligence sells a noncompliant product faces a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature on the first conviction and a felony on subsequent convictions, with prison terms up to 15 years and fines up to $100,000. Selling kratom to a minor is a separate offense in every KCPA state, typically a misdemeanor with mandatory minimum fines.
Regulators find violations through consumer complaints, random inspections, and lab testing. Once an investigation opens, a business has to produce its registration paperwork, certificates of analysis, and sales records. The businesses that take the hardest hits are the ones that skipped testing and registration altogether, not the ones with a minor labeling error.
The Federal Backdrop
No federal law specifically regulates or schedules kratom, but federal silence is not federal approval. The FDA has concluded that kratom is a new dietary ingredient lacking adequate safety data and considers any dietary supplement containing it adulterated under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.1FDA. FDA and Kratom Under Import Alert 54-15, customs districts can detain shipments of kratom-containing supplements and bulk ingredients without physical examination.2U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Detention Without Physical Examination of Dietary Supplements and Bulk Dietary Ingredients That Are or Contain Mitragyna Speciosa or Kratom That federal posture is the gap state consumer protection acts were built to fill.
The most active federal enforcement targets concentrated 7-hydroxymitragynine products, often marketed as “7-OH,” which are synthetically boosted to potencies far above anything found in natural leaf. The FDA has declared that 7-OH cannot lawfully be added to dietary supplements or conventional foods, and no 7-OH drug has ever received FDA approval.3U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA Takes Steps to Restrict 7-OH Opioid Products Threatening American Consumers Congress has introduced the END 7-OH Act (H.R. 8000), which would place synthetic 7-hydroxymitragynine on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act while explicitly exempting the naturally occurring compound found in the kratom leaf.4U.S. Congress. H.R. 8000 – END 7-OH Act A prior Congress introduced a federal version of the Kratom Consumer Protection Act itself, though it did not advance to a vote. For now, the KCPA is a state-by-state framework, and anyone selling, buying, or researching kratom has to read the law of the specific state, and often the specific city, where the product changes hands.