Switzerland schedules mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine as narcotics. It does not schedule the kratom plant. There is no entry for Mitragyna speciosa and none for kratom anywhere in the federal ordinance that lists controlled substances.
That gap has not helped anyone. In December 2022 the appeal court of the canton of Zurich convicted a man who ran a Swiss webshop selling kratom powder, on the reasoning that the mitragynine the powder contained is scheduled, so the powder was a narcotic. The seized kratom was confiscated and destroyed.
His appeal partly succeeded, and the part that failed is the part that matters here. The court acquitted him of the possession limb, but convicted him of unlawful sale and of publicly announcing an opportunity to acquire a narcotic. The holding that kratom containing mitragynine is a narcotic survived the appeal intact.
The money went the other way, and it is worth being exact about it. The first-instance court imposed 180 day-rate units at 50 francs, which is 9,000 francs. The appeal court imposed 120 units at 200 francs, which is 24,000 francs, suspended on two years’ probation. It reduced the number of units and then held that 50 francs a unit was too low for this defendant’s means. So a partly successful appeal left him owing nearly three times as much. Anyone reading the unit count alone would take away the opposite of what happened.
So the practical answer for Switzerland is short. Selling kratom has produced a criminal conviction, and the absence of the plant from the schedules did not prevent it.
What is actually listed
The controlling instrument is the ordinance of the Federal Department of Home Affairs on the schedules of narcotics, psychotropic substances, precursors and auxiliary chemicals, SR 812.121.11, known as the BetmVV-EDI. The version this page rests on is the one in force from 13 March 2026.
Two entries concern kratom, both in Verzeichnis a, which is set out in annex 2:
Mitragynin, product code 7611746958154.
7-Hydroxymitragynin, product code 7611746958147.
Both also appear in the master index at annex 1, which lists the controlled substances of schedules a to d and gives the schedule each belongs to. Both were already there in the version in force from 5 November 2024, so this is not a recent change.
The plant is genuinely absent, and we checked rather than assumed. Switzerland does name plants when it means to: coca leaves and cannabis appear by name, khat is listed as Catha edulis, Blätter, and hallucinogenic mushrooms are listed by genus. Mitragyna speciosa is not among them.
How the court got there anyway
The judgment is Obergericht des Kantons Zürich, II. Strafkammer, SB220245-O1 of 13 December 2022. Its reasoning on the point is one sentence long:
The substance mitragynine contained in kratom is listed in Verzeichnis a of annexes 1 and 2 of the BetmVV-EDI. Consequently it is a narcotic within the meaning of article 19(1) of the Narcotics Act, citing article 2a of that Act together with article 1(2)(a) of the ordinance.
Article 1(2)(a) is the plainest limb of the definition: controlled substances are the substances listed in the schedules. The court did not need the limb about preparations containing a listed substance, and did not use it. It treated the mitragynine in the leaf as the scheduled substance, and the product as a narcotic because it contained it.
The defendant held no authorisation for handling mitragynine-containing products, so he acted without entitlement under article 19(1). The first-instance order confiscating and destroying the seized kratom was not appealed and became final.
What this leaves open, and what it does not
This is a cantonal appeal judgment, not a Federal Supreme Court ruling, so it does not bind the whole country. We have not found a Federal Supreme Court decision on kratom, and we have not found Swissmedic guidance on it either.
What it does do is dispose of the argument that kratom is unregulated in Switzerland because the plant is not scheduled. A Swiss court has considered exactly that situation and convicted. Anyone relying on the gap should read the judgment before they do.
What this means in practice
Mitragynine is a controlled narcotic in Switzerland. Anything sold as a mitragynine preparation, and any extract standardised to it, is squarely within the schedules.
Leaf and powder are not named in the schedules, but a Swiss appeal court has held that leaf material containing mitragynine is a narcotic, and has upheld a conviction for selling it.
There is no Swiss retail market operating on a settled legal footing.
How current this is, and a note on checking it
This page rests on the official PDFs of the ordinance published by Fedlex, in the version in force from 13 March 2026 and the previous version of 5 November 2024, and on the published text of the Zurich judgment.
If you check this yourself, note that Fedlex serves its pages through a JavaScript application that returns nothing useful to an ordinary fetch. The ordinance text has to be read from the PDF in the Fedlex file store, and those addresses are not guessable, which is why the source links below point at PDFs rather than at the pages a search result would take you to.
This page does not state the penalties, and it does not describe what Verzeichnis a placement requires of a licence holder. Both sit in the Narcotics Act and the narcotics control ordinance, which we did not read. The judgment mentions that mitragynine has been scheduled since 2017; we did not verify that date against the ordinance’s own amendment history, so this page does not assert it.
If you can point us to a Federal Supreme Court decision or official guidance on kratom, write to editorial@wikikratom.com and we will update the page and credit the correction.