Kratom has been a Table I narcotic in Italy since 26 August 2016. Both the plant, Mitragyna speciosa, and its principal alkaloid, mitragynine, are named in the schedule. There is no lawful market for kratom in Italy and no form of the product that sits outside the listing.
What follows from that is less simple than the word narcotic suggests. Selling kratom, importing it for supply or transporting it carries a prison sentence. Holding a small amount for your own use does not. It is dealt with by suspending your documents, not by a criminal court. Italian drug law has separated those two tracks since the 1990 consolidated act, though the boundary between them has moved more than once, by referendum in 1993 and by later legislation and constitutional rulings. Coverage of kratom routinely runs them together.
The instrument
The listing was made by ministerial decree rather than by parliament. On 1 August 2016 the Minister of Health signed a decree updating the schedules annexed to Presidential Decree 309/1990, the consolidated Italian drug law. It was published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale on 11 August 2016, issue 187. Article 2 provides that the decree takes effect on the fifteenth day after publication, which is 26 August 2016.
Article 1(1) inserts a list of substances into Table I in alphabetical order. Two of the entries concern kratom. One is MITRAGININA, given under its common name with the full chemical name beside it. The other is MITRAGYNA SPECIOSA pianta (Kratom), given as a common name with no chemical formula, because it is a plant and not a compound.
Listing the plant as well as the alkaloid is the part that decides cases. Where a country schedules only mitragynine, sellers argue that leaf and powder are not the listed substance. Italy closed that argument in the same act that would otherwise have opened it.
What the decree says prompted it
The decree sets out its own reasons, and they are narrower than the outcome. It cites a note of 26 October 2015 from the national early warning system, reference EWS 352/15, reporting a single case of acute intoxication recorded in Italy in June 2015 after a person took mitragynine. It then cites opinions of the Istituto superiore di sanità given on 15 and 24 March 2016, and a favourable opinion of the Consiglio superiore di sanità at its session of 17 May 2016.
Kratom was one of more than thirty substances added to Table I by that decree, in an update that also covered synthetic cannabinoids, several fentanyl-class opioids, ibogaine and the iboga plant. It was a scheduling exercise rather than a kratom inquiry, and the document does not claim otherwise.
Supply is a crime, personal use is an administrative matter
Article 73 of Presidential Decree 309/1990 governs the criminal side. Anyone who, without the authorisation required by article 17, cultivates, produces, sells, transfers, distributes, trades, transports or procures for others a Table I substance faces six to twenty years in prison and a fine of 26,000 to 260,000 euro. That is an abridgement: the statutory list is longer and also reaches manufacturing, extracting, refining, offering for sale, dispatching in transit and delivering for any purpose. Importing, exporting, acquiring, receiving on any basis or otherwise unlawfully holding carries the same penalties under article 73(1-bis), but only where the substances appear destined for a use that is not exclusively personal. Three things bear on that: the quantity, in particular if it is above the maximum limits set by decree of the Minister of Health in concert with the Minister of Justice, after consulting the national anti-drug policy department of the Presidency of the Council; the way the material is presented, judged by gross weight and by whether it has been split into portions; and any other circumstances of the act. Exceeding a limit is one indication among those, not a switch.
Where the offence is of minor gravity, article 73(5) applies instead: six months to five years and a fine of 1,032 to 10,329 euro. Where the conduct is not occasional, the range becomes eighteen months to five years and 2,500 to 10,329 euro. An act is not treated as minor at all where, because of the means or instruments assembled or the way the act was carried out, the conduct in article 73(1) is done in a continuous and habitual way.
Article 75 is the other track. A person who imports, acquires, receives or holds a narcotic for personal use is not prosecuted. They are subject, for a period of two months to one year in the case of a Table I substance, to one or more administrative sanctions: suspension of the driving licence, or a ban on obtaining one for up to three years, suspension of a firearms licence, suspension of the passport and any equivalent document, and for a non-EU citizen suspension of a residence permit issued for tourism.
Which track you are on is decided under article 75(1-bis), on the same three factors: quantity measured against the ministerial limits, how the material is presented, and the other circumstances of the act.
One caution about that. We did not establish whether any maximum limit has ever been set for mitragynine or Mitragyna speciosa, so do not read this page as telling you there is a published weight below which possession is safely administrative.
Note also that article 75 lists importing, exporting, acquiring, receiving and holding, and does not mention cultivation. Growing the plant is dealt with elsewhere in Italian law and by a line of case law we have not read, so this page does not tell you where a home-grown tree would fall.
What this means in practice
Buying kratom in Italy is not possible lawfully, and no Italian shop can sell it.
Ordering it from a Dutch, German or other foreign webshop is importing a Table I narcotic. The package can be stopped by customs and the material seized. If the quantity is small and consistent with your own use, the consequence is administrative rather than criminal, but it is still a consequence, and losing a driving licence for a year is not a minor one.
Anyone reading that kratom is a legal grey area in Italy is reading something that stopped being true in August 2016.
How current this is
The Italian schedules are not fixed by the 1990 decree. They are annexed to it and updated by ministerial decree whenever a substance is added, moved or removed, which happens several times a year. This page rests on the 2016 decree that made the listing and on the current text of articles 73 and 75, both read on the verification date printed at the top.
We have also read the Ministry of Health’s own consolidated Table I, as updated by the decrees of 12 March and 2 April 2026. Both entries are still in it, Mitraginina and Mitragyna Speciosa pianta (Kratom), each footnoted back to the decree of 1 August 2016. So the statement that kratom remains listed rests on the current table and not only on a ten-year-old decree.
The EU Drugs Agency’s kratom drug profile also names Italy among the countries controlling kratom, and we cite it below. Treat that as corroboration and nothing more. It is an undated profile whose newest references are from around 2011, and it is a summary rather than an instrument.
If you know of a later decree that moved or removed either entry, write to editorial@wikikratom.com and we will correct the page and credit the correction.