Kratom is not a narcotic in Austria and it is not on the named list under Austria’s separate regime for new psychoactive substances. Austria is not among the countries the EU Drugs Agency reports as controlling it.
Selling it for people to consume is still unlawful, under food law rather than drug law. That distinction is the whole of the Austrian position, and it is the part that gets flattened in most of what is written about it.
Austria has three lists, and we read all three
The narcotics regulation, the Suchtgiftverordnung, carries five substance annexes, numbered I to V, inside a regulation whose annexes run further than that.
Section 1 of the regulation ties them to the Narcotic Substances Act in stages. Annex I.1 together with annexes II and III are narcotics under section 2(1) of the Act. Annexes IV.1 and V.1 are equated to them under section 2(2). Annexes I.2, IV.2 and V.2 are equated under section 2(3), and those sub-lists are where Austria puts its own national additions. Section 1(4) then sweeps up: everything listed in annexes I to V is a narcotic for the purposes of the Act and the regulation.
We read the consolidated text with all five annexes attached. Cocaine, heroin and cannabis are all in it, which tells us the substance lists rendered rather than being served as a stub. One spelling trap is worth passing on: Austria writes Cocain, so a search for “Kokain” returns nothing and would read as a missing list.
Finding cocaine proves only that a list loaded, not that the list is the current one. Those three substances have been controlled since the 1960s, so they sit in any version of the text however old. So we checked for recent additions as well, and the annexes carry brorphine, butonitazene, metonitazene and MDMB-4en-PINACA, none of which existed as a policing problem before about 2019. The text we searched is the text in force.
Neither Mitragyna speciosa, nor mitragynine, nor 7-hydroxymitragynine is in it.
There is a third list under the same Act, the Psychotropenverordnung, which carries the psychotropic substances rather than the narcotics: diazepam, alprazolam and zolpidem are on it. Kratom is not. We mention it because an account of Austrian scheduling that checks only the narcotics regulation has checked two thirds of the question.
Austria’s second regime is the New Psychoactive Substances Act and the regulation made under it. Annex I of that regulation is a short list of named substances: gamma-butyrolactone, 1,4-butanediol, desmethyltramadol, dimethocaine, fluorotropacocaine, geranamine and salvinorin A. Seven substances, and kratom is not among them.
Salvinorin A is worth pausing on. It is the active compound of Salvia divinorum, and it is not an alkaloid: it contains no nitrogen at all, and is a diterpene. What matters here is simpler than its chemistry. It is a naturally occurring plant constituent, and Austria has put it on this list.
Why the class definitions do not catch it either
Annex II of the new psychoactive substances regulation is published as a separate PDF and defines eleven substance classes by chemical structure rather than naming individual compounds. On its face that is the kind of provision that could catch an unlisted alkaloid, and one class in particular is worth naming: it covers tryptamine and every compound derivable from that core structure. Mitragynine is an indole alkaloid built on a tryptamine skeleton, so the class description is capable of reaching it on its wording.
There is an argument that it cannot, and we are going to set it out and then say why we are not resting on it. Section 1 of the New Psychoactive Substances Act defines a Substanz as eine synthetisch hergestellte chemische Verbindung, a synthetically produced chemical compound. On that reading a plant, and an alkaloid occurring naturally in it, fall outside the definition before any question of chemical class arises.
We have found no Austrian court decision, ministerial statement or commentary adopting that reading, and the regulation itself supplies a reason for doubt: salvinorin A is a naturally occurring plant constituent and the Health Minister has listed it under this same Act. So treat the position as untested rather than settled. What we can say without qualification is that kratom is not named on either Austrian list today.
The bar that does apply
Kratom has no novel food authorisation in the European Union, so selling it as a food for human consumption is unlawful in Austria as in every member state. We set out how that works on our European Union page.
It is also not authorised as a medicine, so it cannot be sold with a claim to treat, prevent or relieve anything. We did not search the Austrian medicines register to confirm that, so treat it as the expected position rather than a checked one.
What this means in practice
Possessing kratom in Austria is not a drug offence, because it is not a controlled substance under either regime we checked.
Importing it for yourself does not run into the narcotics regulation.
Selling it for human consumption is unlawful under food law, and making a health claim about it adds a medicines law problem on top.
How current this is
Both Austrian instruments are amended by regulation, the narcotics annexes more often than the psychoactive substances list. This page rests on the consolidated versions published by the federal legal information system and read on the verification date at the top.
If Austria ever does control kratom, the route would be the narcotics regulation rather than the psychoactive substances regime, because the latter reaches only synthetic compounds. Sub-lists I.2, IV.2 and V.2 of the Suchtgiftverordnung are where Austria adds substances of its own accord, and that is the place to watch.
If a listing has appeared there and you can point us to it, write to editorial@wikikratom.com and we will update the page and credit the correction.