In Malaysia, kratom is called ketum, and it is prohibited. Its active alkaloid, mitragynine, is a controlled poison, and Malaysian law makes importing, exporting, manufacturing, supplying, selling, possessing and using ketum an offence. It is not, however, treated as a hard drug, and whether the country should regulate it instead of banning it is a question its own agencies say is still open.
Malaysia is a producing country, like Indonesia, where kratom grows across the northern states. The two have taken opposite directions. Indonesia has moved to regulate the trade and allow export. Malaysia has kept ketum inside its drug-control law and continues to prohibit it.
A poison, not a dangerous drug
Malaysia runs two separate control regimes. The Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 is the severe one, covering narcotics such as heroin and methamphetamine, and carrying Malaysia’s heaviest drug penalties. The Poisons Act 1952 is a different and lighter regime. Mitragynine sits under the Poisons Act, where it has been listed as a poison and a psychotropic substance since 2003.
That placement is not an accident, and it has survived challenge. Proposals to move ketum into the Dangerous Drugs Act, which would have raised the penalties sharply, were raised and set aside. The lighter regime is still a serious one, and it has grown heavier. Section 30(5) of the Poisons Act now makes an offence involving a psychotropic substance punishable by a fine of up to one hundred thousand ringgit, or up to five years in prison, or both.
Mitragynine is named in two of the Act’s schedules. It is in the First Schedule, the Poisons List, in the version updated by order P.U.(A) 460/2025, and in the Third Schedule, the list of psychotropic substances, in the version updated by order P.U.(A) 248/2026. The Third Schedule entry is the one that matters most, because it is section 30 that the schedule feeds.
The Poisons Act is administered by the Ministry of Health.
What is prohibited
The prohibition is broad, and it is written into the Act rather than only described by ministers. Section 30(3) provides that no person shall import, export, manufacture, compound, mix, dispense, sell, supply, administer, possess or use any psychotropic substance otherwise than in accordance with regulations made under the Act. The whole chain is covered, from bringing it into the country to personal use. Answering in Parliament, the government has described the Act in the same terms.
Section 30(4) adds a presumption that works against a defendant. A person found with a psychotropic substance in his custody or under his control is deemed to have possessed it and to have known what it was, until he proves otherwise.
Two points follow that are easy to miss.
The first is that possession and personal use are themselves offences, not only commercial dealing. Ketum in Malaysia is most visible as a drink, air ketum, widely consumed in the northern states, and it is that consumption the law reaches.
The second is that export is prohibited. Whatever commercial interest exists in selling Malaysian ketum abroad, the current law bars it. This is the sharpest contrast with Indonesia, which has built a regulated export channel for the same plant.
Whether to regulate instead is still open
Ketum grows widely in Malaysia and carries real economic and social weight in the states where it is cultivated, and there is a standing argument that the country should build a regulated, legal industry around it rather than police it as a poison. That argument has been made by state figures and legislators, particularly in the north.
It has not become law. The national anti-drugs agency, in its own assessment of the plant’s social, economic and environmental effects, describes the legal status of ketum as remaining subject to debate at both the policy and the academic level. That is an unusually candid official statement, and it is the accurate one: the question is genuinely unresolved.
So Malaysia should not be read as a country quietly liberalising. As the law stands, ketum is prohibited, and the move to regulation that has happened in Indonesia has not happened here.
What this means in practice
Buying, selling, possessing or using ketum in Malaysia is an offence under section 30 of the Poisons Act.
It is not prosecuted as a dangerous drug, and the penalties are lower than for narcotics, but it is still a criminal matter, and the maximum is a fine of one hundred thousand ringgit or five years in prison or both. Anyone found holding it starts from a statutory presumption that they possessed it knowingly.
Exporting ketum from Malaysia is prohibited under the current law, regardless of demand abroad.
The policy could change. The regulate-or-prohibit question is, by the government’s own account, still open, and the verification date at the top of this page is the date we last checked where it stood.