RHODE ISLAND BECOMES FIRST STATE TO FLIP KRATOM BAN

Following a series of body blows against kratom regulation, advocates for the herbal supplement scored a knockout punch by overturning a statewide ban that had stood for nearly a decade. 

Rhode Island became the first state to ditch its kratom ban in favor of regulation when the Rhode Island Kratom Act was signed into law on July 2. A year after Gov. Dan McKee vetoed the state’s attempt to regulate kratom, the same sponsors came back with a robust approach to regulation that gives Rhode Island kratom consumers access in a state that criminalized the plant in 2017. 

That doesn’t mean it was a simple process. 

Sen. Hanna Gallo, who is also the Senate President Pro Tempore in Rhode Island, authored both attempts in the past two sessions to regulate kratom. Rep. Brian Patrick Kennedy joined Gallo as the sponsor in the state’s House of Representatives and together crafted a 25-page bill known as the Rhode Island Kratom Act. 

In addition to echoing language from the 17 other states that have opted for regulation over restrictions, the pair of bills was also carefully crafted to appease McKee, who cited health concerns and regulatory issues with the 2024 attempt to overturn the kratom ban. McKee’s veto came after several state agencies spoke out against kratom, including perceived problems with the technical details of enforcement and funding surrounding that bill. 

At the time, McKee left the door open despite deciding to veto the measure. 

“I look forward to working with the sponsors, my state agencies, and stakeholders to review and discuss these issues and examine the manner in which other states have regulated kratom,” said the letter that accompanied McKee’s veto. 

The length and detail of the 2025 bills showed that McKee followed through on his word. 

Robust Regulatory Requirements

What emerged from that back-and-forth was the Rhode Island Kratom Act, which is far and away the most comprehensive approach of any state that has put guardrails on a legal kratom industry. The elements that remained the same from the previous effort to regulate kratom fall in line with similar legislation in other states: A ban on adulterants and synthetic alkaloids; detailed labeling requirements and declarations; and a minimum age for purchase (21) alongside restrictions to keep kratom products from being accessed by or attractive to children. 

The unique elements of the Rhode Island bill span from hyperspecific details of what type of kratom products are legal in the state to more banal details, such as licensing fees and definitions that affect kratom sellers and producers. 

For example, the Rhode Island Kratom Act has the most restrictive language on products containing 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH) of any law in the United States. While other states set limits on the overall percentage of 7-OH as compared to the total amount of alkaloids, this bill sets a limit of 0.5 mg per gram and bans products that contain more than 1 mg of 7-OH per serving. Unlike other bills, Rhode Island’s regulation also caps the amount of mitragynine (the primary alkaloid in kratom) that can be included in a single serving. 

A vast majority of the 25-page bill focuses on the regulatory structure, fines, fees and taxes associated with the kratom market in the state and exactly how these regulations will be enforced in the state–the same issues that kept McKee from signing the bill during the last legislative session. 

The bill survived being “held for consideration” by committees in both the Senate and House before it was reconsidered during the final month of the legislative session. After the details were ironed out, it was first recommended favorably in the House before passing a floor vote 40-24. It took three weeks to make it to a floor vote in the Senate, where it passed by a margin of 24-10. 

Standing Up For Science

When testifying in front of the House Committee on Corporations, Kennedy told legislators that the level of detail in the bill came after meeting with the various stakeholders in the state government in the wake of the 2024 veto, including the man who signed that action. 

“I had the opportunity to sit with the governor and some of his staff, and he said, ‘Let’s work on this and try to create a piece of legislation that will work for the state of Rhode Island,’” Kennedy said. 

After narrowly passing the 2024 attempt on the final night of the legislative session, Kennedy and Gallo carefully guided the 2025 bill through the two chambers of the state legislature with months of work, committee hearings and discussion in their respective chambers. 

During that same hearing in front of the House committee, Dr. Kirsten Smith helped Kennedy make the point in favor of regulating kratom. Smith is a researcher at Johns Hopkins University who has also worked with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to study kratom, the consumers who take kratom and the chemical profile of the products that are made from the plant. 

“I have no life. All I do is study this,” Smith said. 

That study came in handy when the bill received pushback in front of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services. 

In front of a handful of lawmakers who voted against kratom regulations in 2024, Smith held her ground when challenged on whether or not kratom should be classified as an opioid. Even after pushback from a representative with a medical background and a professor speaking on behalf of the Rhode Island Pharmacists Association, Smith made it clear that kratom is distinctly different from the substances it was being compared to. 

“It’s not an opioid. There are at least five mechanisms that are not opioid-related… You can’t just put (kratom) in the opioid bucket,” Smith said. 

Similar efforts to characterize kratom as a dangerous substance were made during the floor debate on Kennedy’s bill in the state House of Representatives. One representative even went as far as to compare kratom to plant-based substances that have been banned by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), even though the FDA has failed twice to take action against kratom due to the prevailing science on the plant. 

Kennedy did not waver in his support of kratom, pointing to a recent study conducted by the FDA in making the case for the passage of his bill. 

“The FDA dose-finding study concluded kratom is safe at all dose levels, and they put a lot of kratom into people for that to be determined,” Kennedy said.