Kratom is a controlled drug in Romania. The plant, Mitragyna speciosa Korth, and both of its named alkaloids, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine, appear in Table III of Law 143/2000, the act on preventing and combating drug trafficking and illicit drug use.
Romania sorts controlled drugs into two tiers, and kratom is in the lower one. That matters for the sentence, and it does not make possession lawful. Buying or holding kratom for your own consumption is a criminal offence in Romania punishable by three months to two years in prison or a fine.
Where kratom sits
Law 143/2000 carries four annexed tables. Article 1 defines the tiers by reference to them: drugs listed in Tables I and II are droguri de mare risc, high-risk drugs; drugs listed in Table III are droguri de risc, risk drugs.
Three entries in Table III concern kratom. They read, in the original, 7-hidroximitragynina, Mitraginina, and Mitragyna speciosa Korth (Kratom).
The company they keep says something about how Romania categorised them. The neighbouring
entries in Table III include Amanita muscaria, ibogaine, ketamine, muscimol, Nymphaea
caerulea, Turbina corymbosa and every species of the genus Argyreia. That is not a
general rule about plants, and it would be wrong to read it as one: Romania puts every species
of the genus Psilocybe in Table I, and the entry Cannabis, rezină de cannabis şi ulei de cannabis in Table III, which covers the herb as well as the resin and the oil. The
tables sort by the risk tier Romania assigned, not by whether the source is a plant.
Listing the plant and the alkaloids separately closes the argument that leaf material is not the listed substance. Both are named.
What the tier changes
Article 2(1) covers the supply side. Cultivating, producing, manufacturing, experimenting with, extracting, preparing, transforming, offering, putting up for sale, selling, distributing, delivering, sending, transporting, procuring, buying, holding or carrying out other operations concerning the circulation of risk drugs, without right, is punishable by three to ten years in prison and a prohibition on exercising certain rights.
Article 2(2) raises that to five to fifteen years where the drugs are high-risk. Kratom is not, so the lower range applies.
Article 4(1) is the provision most readers of this page will care about. Cultivating, producing, manufacturing, experimenting with, extracting, preparing, transforming, buying or possessing risk drugs for one’s own consumption, without right, is punishable by three months to two years in prison or a fine. Article 4(2) makes it six months to three years for high-risk drugs.
Personal possession stays inside the criminal law in Romania. The sentence is lower than for supply, and a fine is available instead of prison, but it is a criminal court that decides.
There is a diversion route, and it sits inside the criminal process rather than replacing it. Under article 19 the prosecutor may order that a person charged under article 4 be assessed with a view to inclusion in the integrated assistance programme, and must do so where the person is a minor. Under article 20, if they comply, the court may waive the penalty or defer it, including in cases where the general Criminal Code conditions for doing so are not met. So the offence remains criminal and can still end without a penalty.
The law also states plainly that consuming drugs under national control without a medical prescription is prohibited on Romanian territory, and provides that a person who does so may be included, with their consent, in an integrated assistance programme.
What this means in practice
There is no lawful retail market for kratom in Romania, and no Romanian shop can sell it.
Ordering it from a Dutch, German or other foreign webshop brings a third provision into play, and it is the harshest of the three. Article 3(1) makes bringing a risk drug into the country, or importing it, without right, punishable by five to fifteen years in prison and a prohibition on exercising certain rights. That is a higher range than article 2 and an order of magnitude above article 4.
It is tempting to present the choice as a binary between article 2 for supply and article 4 for personal use, and that is what an earlier version of this page did. Romanian law does not support it. In a binding preliminary ruling of 25 April 2017, decision 15/2017, the High Court of Cassation and Justice held that a single continuous transport of drugs across a foreign state’s territory and Romania’s satisfies both article 2 and article 3 at once. The court’s reasoning, as it later restated it, also records that bringing drugs into the country does not require carrying them in yourself: it can be done by sending a parcel or through another person.
The same court was then asked the own-consumption version of that question: whether carrying drugs for your own use from abroad into Romania is article 3 together with article 4, or article 4 alone. In decision 18 of 5 December 2018 it declined to rule, and the reason is the important part. It held the referral inadmissible because the 2017 decision already supplied the answer, and said that the 2017 solution, under which the two offences exist side by side, “remains valid” where drugs cross the border and are then held for one’s own consumption while being transported in Romania. That is a ruling on admissibility rather than a fresh judgment on the merits, and we have not examined how lower courts have applied it since. It is still the High Court’s own statement of how the provisions fit together, and it points to article 3 applying alongside article 4, not instead of it. A reader who assumes a two-year maximum applies to a parcel from abroad is reasoning from the wrong provision.
The listing covers the plant by name, so leaf, powder and capsules are caught, and the separate alkaloid entries catch extracts and anything sold as a mitragynine preparation.
How current this is
This page rests on the consolidated text of Law 143/2000 including its annexed tables, read on the verification date at the top. The tables are actively maintained: the consolidated text we read records amendments running to Law 30 of 25 March 2025. They have been updated both by act of parliament and by government instrument, so the amending chain is worth following rather than assuming.
The EU Drugs Agency also names Romania among the countries reported to control kratom, which is corroboration rather than authority. Its kratom drug profile is undated and its newest references are from around 2011.
One practical note for anyone checking our work: the Ministry of Justice portal is awkward to reach. It refuses automated scrapers, and on 3 August 2026 it did not answer a plain request with a browser user agent either. Two routes do work. The Internet Archive holds captures of the portal page that render the full consolidated law and all four tables, and Romania’s national medicines agency publishes its own consolidated PDF. So this page cites the law twice, and neither citation should be treated as unreachable. The Ministry of Justice entry is the authoritative location; the second carries the same four annexed tables. The three kratom entries were read in Table III, from both.
We did not examine Romanian sentencing practice, and this page does not tell you what a court would actually do with a small quantity of kratom. It tells you what the statute provides.
If a later amendment has moved any of the three entries between tables, write to editorial@wikikratom.com and we will update the page and credit the correction.