Kratom is a controlled drug in Ireland, in the strictest schedule Ireland has, and possessing it is unlawful as well as selling it.
Mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine are both in Schedule 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2017. Neither entry stops at the chemical. Each is followed by the words: and any product, whether natural or otherwise, including any plant or plant material of any kind or description, which contains any proportion of the said substance.
That clause is the whole point. Ireland never names kratom, Mitragyna speciosa or the leaf. It did not need to. Any plant material containing any proportion of mitragynine is inside the listing by the terms of the listing itself.
Ireland is not on the EU Drugs Agency’s list of countries reported to control kratom. On this point that list is wrong, and it should not be used to conclude that Ireland leaves kratom alone.
Why a keyword search misses it
The Regulations give the full chemical names, not the common ones. Search the Irish Statute Book for “kratom” or “Mitragyna” and you will find nothing. The substances are there as Methyl (E)-2-[(2S,3S,12bS)-3-ethyl-8-methoxy-1,2,3,4,6,7,12,12b-octahydroindolo[2,3a]quinolizin-2-yl]-3-methoxyprop-2-enoate and its 7-hydroxy analogue, each with the common name in brackets afterwards, followed by the catch-all.
What Schedule 1 carries
Control did not begin with the 2017 Regulations, which is the first thing most accounts of the Irish position get wrong, including an earlier version of this page. Mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine became controlled drugs by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 (Controlled Drugs) (Declaration) Order 2011, which came into operation on 1 November 2011. The 2017 Regulations placed them in a schedule; the 2011 order is what made them controlled drugs in the first place.
Schedule 1 is also a moving target, and the 2017 Regulations as originally made are not the operative text. They are amended regularly and cited collectively as the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2017 to 2026. The most recent amendment to the schedule at the date below is S.I. No. 438/2026, notified in Iris Oifigiúil on 25 August 2026 and in force from 1 September 2026, which inserts a group of nitazene opioids, ADB-BUTINACA and 2-fluorodeschloroketamine into paragraph 1(a). It is additive. It leaves the mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine entries, and the catch-all wording after each of them, exactly as they were.
The Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2017 set the general prohibition in regulation 5(1): a person shall not produce a controlled drug, supply or offer to supply a controlled drug, or import or export a controlled drug. Regulation 5(2) exempts a few things from that, namely poppy straw from the supply limb and Part 2 of Schedule 4 and Schedule 5 drugs from the import and export limb. Schedule 1 is not among those exemptions, though regulation 6 does allow any of it under a licence from the Minister, which is not a route open to a shop or a buyer.
Possession is prohibited by a different route again, and it is worth setting out properly because it is the part readers most want to know. Section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 provides that a person shall not have a controlled drug in their possession, and that contravening it is an offence. Regulation 10 of the 2017 Regulations then permits possession only of Schedule 2, Schedule 3 and Part 1 Schedule 4 drugs. Schedule 1 is absent, so nothing lifts the section 3 prohibition for kratom.
A designation order does separate work. The current one is the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 (Controlled Drugs) (Designation) Order 2022, and mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine appear in its Schedule 1 with the same catch-all wording. Designation under section 13(1) disapplies sections 4(2) and 5(2) of the Act for a drug, which is what closes off the routes by which practitioners and pharmacists could otherwise handle it. It is not the provision that makes possession an offence.
So possession is not a gap in the Irish position. It is covered, by section 3 of the Act read with regulation 10.
The statute that does not apply, and why people cite it anyway
Ireland has a blanket ban on psychoactive substances, the Criminal Justice (Psychoactive Substances) Act 2010, and it is the provision most often pointed at when kratom in Ireland comes up. Its definition of a psychoactive substance expressly includes plants, and it makes selling, importing or exporting one for human consumption an offence.
It is not the law that applies here. Section 2(1)(f) provides that the Act does not apply to a controlled drug unless the Act expressly says otherwise. Because mitragynine is a controlled drug, kratom falls outside the 2010 Act and inside the Misuse of Drugs regime instead.
That distinction is not academic. The two regimes have different offences, different defences and different penalties, and a page that tells an Irish reader their position is governed by the 2010 Act has sent them to the wrong statute.
What this means in practice
There is no lawful retail market for kratom in Ireland, and no Irish shop can sell it.
Ordering it from a Dutch, German or other foreign webshop is importing a Schedule 1 controlled drug under regulation 5(1)(c).
Having it is separately unlawful under section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977, so the question is not only how the material reached you.
There is no product formulation outside this. The catch-all reaches leaf, powder, capsules, extracts and anything else containing any proportion of either alkaloid.
How current this is, and what we did not read
An earlier version of this page cited the Misuse of Drugs (Designation) Order 2017 as current law. It is not. Article 3 of S.I. No. 122 of 2021 revoked it, and that order was itself replaced by the 2022 order this page now cites. We had disclosed at the time that we had not traced the amendment history, which was honest and was not enough: a disclosure does not make a spent instrument current, and the sentence that rested on it was the one telling readers where the possession prohibition came from.
The Regulations have been amended too. Schedule 1 was substituted wholesale in 2022 and added to in 2025, and both kratom entries survive in the current text. We checked that rather than assuming it.
This page states no penalties. Sections 15 to 27 of the 1977 Act carry them and we have not read those provisions, so what a court would impose is outside what we can tell you.
If you can point us to a later instrument that changes any of this, write to editorial@wikikratom.com and we will update the page and credit the correction.