Indonesia produces most of the kratom traded in the world, and it has decided not to ban it. The country’s health ministry has stated that the plant is not a narcotic. Rather than prohibit it, the government is regulating it, mainly as an export commodity, while its own research agencies continue to study whether it is safe.
That makes Indonesia a different kind of case from most of this section. Elsewhere the question is whether a consuming country will permit kratom. Here it is how the main producing country will govern a plant that grows on its own territory and supports tens of thousands of its households.
Not a narcotic
Indonesia’s narcotics agency had for years pushed to have kratom placed on the national narcotics list. That did not happen. At an internal government meeting chaired by President Joko Widodo in June 2024, the position that prevailed was the health ministry’s: that kratom does not fall within the narcotics category.
That is a statement of policy, so we checked it against the list itself rather than leave it resting on what officials said. The current classification is Regulation of the Minister of Health No. 15 of 2025, in force since 28 November 2025, which replaced the version made earlier the same year and sets out narcotics groups I, II and III in full. Kratom is not in it, under any of Mitragyna, speciosa, mitragynine or the Indonesian spelling.
The list rendered when we read it: cocaine, cannabis, heroin, morphine, cathinone and methamphetamine are all in the same file. It is also current rather than an old copy, because mephedrone, several nitazenes and a run of ADB- and MDMB- synthetic cannabinoids appear in it, and those are substances added to schedules everywhere after 2015.
The same meeting set the direction that has held since. The president asked the National Research and Innovation Agency and the food and drug authority to carry out further research into the plant’s effects and safety, on the stated view that its risks were not yet well enough understood to quantify. Officials acknowledged the plant has sedative properties in certain amounts, and framed the research as the way to establish how much of a hazard it actually poses.
So possessing and growing kratom is not a drug offence in Indonesia. It is an endemic plant, used traditionally in West Kalimantan, where the government has said more than eighteen thousand families depend on it for a living.
But not a permitted health product
Legal to grow is not the same as free to sell in any form. Since 2016 the food and drug authority, BPOM, has prohibited the use of Mitragyna speciosa as an ingredient in traditional medicines and health supplements. A kratom product cannot be registered and sold as a supplement or herbal remedy inside Indonesia.
The plant is therefore legal as a plant, and as an agricultural commodity, but it is shut out of the regulated market for products people take for their health.
Regulated for export
The government’s main instrument has been trade regulation rather than prohibition. A ministry of trade regulation, Permendag 20/2024, in force from 28 September 2024, amended the list of goods prohibited for export so as to bar the export of whole kratom leaves and of crushed material coarser than 600 microns. In practice kratom may be exported only as fine powder, not as raw leaf.
The stated aim is quality and traceability. The government has said Indonesian kratom should be free of salmonella, E. coli and heavy metals, after shipments were rejected abroad for contamination, and that production would be overseen by BPOM and independent surveyors. It has also said it would limit the number of authorised exporters rather than let anyone ship. That export system is now operating: the trade ministry sets export-right percentages for defined periods, as in its allocation for the second half of 2026.
None of this is a safety endorsement. It is a set of controls on how a commodity leaves the country, and it sits alongside the research the government itself has said is still needed.
Still being built
The framework is not finished. As recently as November 2025, the coordinating ministry for legal affairs was still convening other ministries, the narcotics agency, surveyors and industry and farmer associations to synchronise the rules on kratom governance and export. A reader should treat the detail here as a snapshot of a moving picture, and note the verification date at the top.
What this means in practice
Kratom is legal to grow, hold and trade as a plant in Indonesia, and it is not a narcotic.
It cannot be registered or sold domestically as a health supplement or traditional medicine.
Exporting it is regulated: only fine powder may be shipped, quality standards apply, and the number of exporters and the volume they may send are controlled by the state.
The safety questions are, on the Indonesian government’s own account, not yet settled, and its agencies are still studying them. This site does not claim more certainty than that.