Kratom is prohibited in France. Unlike the Netherlands or Germany, where its availability rests on gaps and omissions, France made an explicit decision and wrote it down.
If you are in France, this page is short and the answer is simple. Possession and sale are offences.
The instrument
By arrêté of 23 December 2019, published in the Journal officiel on 1 January 2020, France added the words “kratom, mitragynine et 7-hydroxymitragynine” to the third part of the arrêté of 22 February 1990, which fixes the list of substances classified as psychotropes.
Note what was listed. Not only the plant, but both principal alkaloids by name. A product cannot escape the classification by being an extract rather than a leaf, or by being sold as an isolated compound.
The listing remains in force. It appears in the ANSM’s consolidated list of psychotropic substances, which carries the update date 3 July 2026 on its own first page. The entry reads “Kratom, mitragynine, 7-hydroxymitragynine” and cites the 2019 arrêté beside it. The list files it in the third part, which the ANSM describes as psychoactive substances classified in France or the EU but not under the international conventions.
That consolidated list is published for information only. The ANSM says so in its own preamble: what binds is the amended arrêté of 22 February 1990 together with the decisions of the agency’s director general. The power to classify moved from the health minister to the ANSM’s director general under a law of 7 December 2020 and a decree of 1 February 2022.
Psychotrope, not stupéfiant
France maintains two separate control lists: stupéfiants (narcotics) and psychotropes (psychotropic substances). Kratom is on the second.
The distinction is easy to lose in translation, and “France banned kratom as a narcotic” is not what happened. The difference is real in French law, where the two regimes carry different regulatory frameworks.
It is not, however, a loophole. The psychotropic regime has its own prohibition and its own penalty, both in the Code de la santé publique, set out in the next section. The ANSM states the consequence in its announcement: possession and purchase “sont maintenant interdits” (are now prohibited). A reader looking for encouragement in the technicality will not find any here.
The prohibition and the penalty
Classification on its own only puts kratom on a list. Two other provisions do the work.
What is prohibited. Article R5132-88 of the Code de la santé publique prohibits, unless expressly authorised, the production, manufacture, transport, import, export, possession, offer, transfer, acquisition or use of any substance classified as a psychotrope. Authorisation is an administrative licence for professional handling, of the kind a pharmaceutical manufacturer holds. It is not something a private buyer can obtain for personal use.
The penalty. Article L5432-2 of the same code sets the punishment for anyone who illicitly manufactures, imports, exports, transports, offers, transfers, acquires, possesses or uses a substance classified as a psychotrope: up to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to €375,000. The maximum rises to seven years and €750,000 where the acts were committed by an organised gang, or where the offer, transfer or acquisition took place over a telecommunications network aimed at an undetermined public. An attempt carries the same penalties (article L5432-3).
Those are statutory maximums. The article draws no line between personal and commercial quantities, and this page does not describe how French courts sentence in practice, because we have not read that case law.
Why France acted
The ANSM gave “serious risks to health” as its reason when it announced the classification. The evidence it described was a survey it had commissioned from France’s national addictovigilance network (the CEIP-A, which monitors drug dependence) covering 2007 to 2018. That survey reported twenty cases of kratom consumption, fourteen of them since 2016, involving dependence, withdrawal, anorexia, weight loss, one psychotic decompensation and one toxic hepatitis. One death was also reported, in a context of using several drugs and medicines together.
That is case-report evidence: it shows that these harms occurred in individual people, not how often they occur. Germany’s federal risk institute cited the French prohibition of purchase and possession by name in its own 2025 statement on kratom.
What this means in practice
- Possessing kratom in France is an offence under article R5132-88, punishable under article L5432-2. So is selling it, buying it or importing it.
- Ordering it from a Dutch or German webshop does not change that. The package crosses into a jurisdiction where the contents are a controlled psychotropic substance. Legality at the point of dispatch is irrelevant to your position at the point of delivery.
- Extracts and isolated alkaloids are covered, because mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine are named individually, and because the third part of the list extends to their salts and to preparations containing them.
We will not tell you how to obtain kratom in France, and any site that does is not looking after your interests.
If you are dependent and in France
Prohibition does not dissolve dependence, and a person in withdrawal needs help rather than a legal lecture. In France, Drogues Info Service (0 800 23 13 13, free and anonymous) is the national helpline. A GP is also a legitimate route, and the consultation is confidential.