MISSISSIPPI’S ATTEMPTS TO REOPEN KRATOM BAN FALL FLAT IN COMMITTEE

In the wake of Mississippi’s drawn-out debate over kratom in the state, a group of lawmakers crafted a multifaceted approach to poke holes in the regulations that passed during the 2025 legislative session. 

Those combined efforts didn’t even make it a month. 

A set of six proposed bills was introduced at the beginning of the current legislative session in Mississippi in an attempt to challenge kratom’s availability in a variety of ways. Instead of reopening the question of kratom’s availability in the state, the bills were quickly dismissed by a handful of committees across both chambers of the legislature. The swift action of the legislature keeps kratom access intact for consumers in Mississippi and reinforces the notion that lawmakers prefer regulation to prohibition. 

Whether directly or not, each of the bills introduced challenged the existing kratom law, which established a robust set of rules to bring Mississippi up to date with other states that have opted for regulation over prohibition. 

Challenging Existing Law

What started as HB1077 during last year’s session was signed into law and took effect on July 1, 2025. That bill set rules for what constitutes a kratom product, including measures that favor natural kratom products, and it sets requirements on labels, how kratom can be sold and requires customers to be 21 years old. 

Multiple bills were introduced in 2025. The effort to get HB1077 across the finish line was the culmination of a complex discussion in both chambers of the legislature. The two houses considered a variety of kratom laws and chose the path of consumer protections over a potential ban or attempts to schedule the plant. That didn’t stop some lawmakers from reviving those efforts. 

Two bills were introduced in the state Senate in 2026, including a renewed effort to make kratom a Schedule III substance. The other bill would have prohibited the sale and distribution of beverages containing kratom, hemp or THC. The bill to schedule kratom would have also directly repealed the law passed in 2025, and was sent to the Senate Drug Policy Committee. 

The bill that targeted kratom beverages followed a familiar attempt to tie kratom’s availability to other, unrelated products and was sent to the Public Health and Welfare Committee. Both bills died in committee on Feb. 3. 

A total of four bills were introduced in the House of Representatives: two that would make kratom Schedule III, an attempt to go a step further to Schedule I and a bill that would have indirectly targeted such products by passing on authority to the State Department of Health. 

One of the bills to make kratom a Schedule III substance was supported only by the House member who introduced the bill; the attempt to go for Schedule I also had just one lawmaker supporting the effort. The other attempt to make kratom a Schedule III substance had 13 sponsors. All three were assigned to the Drug Policy Committee and the Business and Commerce Committee, where the bills died on the same day as those introduced in the Senate. 

A New Path to Prohibition

The last of the bills followed one of the newer methods that state authorities have implemented to take action against kratom products. As it was written, the proposed law would not have specific rules about kratom sales and restrictions. Instead, House Bill 1639 was drafted to “establish a screening and approval program for the over-the-counter availability and retail sale of products that contain any substance with the potential to be recreationally used or abused.” 

It did contain specific language indicating that kratom was among the intended targets of the bill. 

“The purpose of the program is to reduce the retail sale and availability of products that contain certain over-the-counter substances, including, but not limited to, bath salts, kratom, and tianeptine.” 

Unlike the other three bills, HB1639 was steered toward the House Public Health and Human Services Committee. Similar to the other five bills introduced, the indirect measure to target kratom died in committee on Feb. 3. 

After the 2025 debates centered around synthetic and enhanced 7-OH products, that level of nuance was absent in the attempts to target all kratom products during this year’s session. Each of the attempts to schedule kratom included both mitragynine and 7-OH, with no differentiation or discussion about developments by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 

Less than a month after Mississippi passed its law, which included a limit on the amount of 7-OH that can be included in a product legally labeled as kratom, the FDA announced its intention to target products that would not meet the standards established in the state. Rather than adhere to the example set by the federal government, Mississippi lawmakers attempted to roll back those regulations. 

In 2025, the debate over kratom played out as a back-and-forth in both houses and dragged on until later in the spring. This year, all six attempts failed in the first few weeks of the legislative session, sending a clear message that the kratom question has been answered in Mississippi.