Kratom is on Latvia’s List I, the strictest of its four schedules of controlled substances. So are both of its named alkaloids, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine. List I is described in the law itself as covering prohibited especially dangerous narcotic substances, the psychotropic substances treated as equivalent to them, and plants whose illegal circulation and abuse endangers health.
Latvia also does something unusual and, for a reader, unusually useful. It publishes exact quantities next to each entry. For dried kratom leaf, anything up to one gram counts as a small amount, and one hundred grams or more counts as a large one. Those numbers are in the statute, not in guidance.
Where the lists live now
This is the part most easily got wrong, because the instrument moved.
Until 2021 the Latvian control lists were set by Cabinet regulation number 847 of 8 November 2005. That regulation lost force on 1 June 2021, and a page citing it today is citing a repealed text.
Kratom was not in it when it was made. The 2005 regulation as adopted contains no entry for mitragyna speciosa, mitragynine or 7-hydroxymitragynine. All three were added later, by Cabinet regulation number 428 of 12 May 2009, which came into force on 16 May 2009 and inserted them as items 7.7, 7.12 and 7.13 of a new point 7 covering substances and plants whose illegal circulation and abuse may endanger health. Latvia has controlled kratom since 16 May 2009, not since 2005.
That distinction is easy to lose, and an earlier version of this page lost it. Opening a consolidated version of the 2005 regulation shows the kratom entry sitting in a text headed with a 2005 date, which invites the reader to date the control to 2005. The consolidation is the regulation as later amended, not as made.
The lists now sit in annex 2 to the law on the procedure for the entry into force and application of the Criminal Law, under a heading that names both halves of what it does: the substances controlled in Latvia, and the size bands their illegal circulation is divided into. One annex, Lists I to IV, and a quantity threshold against every entry.
The entries, and the numbers
Two of the kratom entries appear in the part of List I headed substances with psychotropic action:
7-hidroksimitraginīns, CAS 174418-82-7. A small amount is up to 0.03 g. A large amount starts at 15 g.
Mitraginīns, CAS 6202-22-8. A small amount is up to 0.03 g. A large amount starts at 3 g.
The third appears in the part headed plant products with psychotropic action, alongside Catha edulis, Leonotis leonurus, Nymphaea caerulea, Salvia divinorum, ephedra and hallucinogenic mushrooms:
Mitragyna speciosa (kratom). Dried: a small amount is up to 1 g, a large amount starts at 100 g. Undried: a small amount is up to 100 g, a large amount starts at 1 kg.
The dried and undried distinction is doing real work, though not evenly. At the small-amount line, dried material is treated a hundred times more strictly by weight than fresh: 1 g against 100 g. At the large-amount line the gap narrows to tenfold, 100 g against 1 kg.
What the thresholds are for
Latvian law uses these figures to sort conduct into bands. The published numbers tell you where the boundaries are; they do not by themselves tell you the consequence of landing in one band rather than another, and this page does not attempt to. The offences and their penalties are in the Criminal Law itself, which we did not read for this page.
What the numbers do tell you plainly is the scale the Latvian legislature was working at. The small-amount ceiling for dried kratom is a single gram and the large-amount floor is a hundred. Those are grams of plant material, not of an isolated alkaloid, which is what makes them low.
What this means in practice
The annex sorts substances and sets quantity bands. It does not prohibit anything, and the prohibition is worth citing properly rather than inferring from a schedule. It is in article 5 of the law on the legal circulation of narcotic and psychotropic substances, medicines and precursors, which forbids growing, producing, manufacturing, importing, exporting, distributing, advertising, transporting, storing, transferring for payment or free of charge, acquiring and using List I plants, substances and medicines, and sending them through Latvian territory.
So there is no lawful retail market for kratom in Latvia and no Latvian shop can sell it, and ordering it from a Dutch, German or other foreign webshop is prohibited import and acquisition under that article.
Coverage of product forms is also in the instruments rather than inferred. The 2009 regulation that added kratom also added a provision reaching plant parts, dried plants, pressed plants, powders, tablets, capsules, extracts, tinctures and any other preparation made from listed plants, excluding products that may lawfully be distributed under food law. No kratom product qualifies for that exclusion, because kratom holds no EU novel food authorisation.
How current this is
This page rests on the consolidated text of the law and its annex as published on likumi.lv, read on the verification date at the top. We also opened the 2005 regulation as originally adopted, and the 2009 regulation that amended it, to establish when the kratom entry was created rather than assuming the date on the instrument it sits in.
We did not read the Criminal Law provisions that attach consequences to these quantities, and we have not stated any penalty on this page for that reason.
If a later amendment changes the entries or the thresholds, write to editorial@wikikratom.com and we will update the page and credit the correction.