Thailand is the country that changed its mind about kratom. It banned the plant in 1943 and kept it on the narcotics list for close to eighty years. Then, in the space of two years, it took kratom off that list and built a legal framework around it. Today an adult in Thailand can grow, hold, buy and consume kratom leaf lawfully, and the trade around it is regulated rather than prohibited.
That makes Thailand the clearest case in this section of a country moving in the opposite direction to a ban. It is also, like Indonesia, a producing country, where the plant grows in the south and has a long history of everyday use among farm and manual workers.
From one of the oldest bans to legal
Thailand first outlawed kratom under the Kratom Act of 1943. For decades the plant sat alongside cannabis and psilocybin mushrooms as a Category 5 narcotic under Thai drug law, even though it grew wild and was chewed by workers in the south to get through long days.
Two separate laws undid that, and the order they came in matters.
Step one, 2021: kratom leaves the narcotics list
The change that counts most came first. The Narcotics Act (No. 8) B.E. 2564, given by the King on 25 May 2021, removed Mitragyna speciosa from the list of Category 5 narcotics. Section 2 of that Act set the removal to take effect ninety days after publication in the Royal Gazette, which fell on 24 August 2021.
From that date, possessing, consuming, growing and trading kratom stopped being a drug offence in Thailand. The Act’s own stated reasoning was that kratom is a plant used in traditional community life, and that treating it as a narcotic no longer fit.
Step two, 2022: a law of its own
Taking kratom off the narcotics list left it legal but ungoverned. The Kratom Plant Act B.E. 2565 filled that gap. It was published in the Royal Gazette on 26 August 2022 (Volume 139, Part 52a) and, under its Section 2, took effect the following day.
The Act does several things at once:
- It treats kratom as an economic plant. Section 9 gives the Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) the job of supporting people who grow and process kratom leaf, backing research, and developing it as a crop with commercial value. The same agency that once policed kratom as a drug is now told to promote it.
- It licenses import and export. Under Section 10, anyone importing or exporting kratom leaf needs a licence from the ONCB Secretary-General and must notify the authority each time. Travellers carrying a personal quantity across the border for their own use are exempt.
- It restricts who can be sold to. The Act’s stated purpose includes protecting people under eighteen and other at-risk groups from consuming kratom leaf, and Chapter 5 limits sale and marketing to that end.
- It keeps the drug cocktail illegal. Section 27 prohibits consuming kratom leaf that has been boiled or mixed with narcotics or psychotropic substances. This is aimed at the practice, long a worry in southern Thailand, of combining kratom tea with other drugs.
Leaf is not the same as product
One distinction matters for anyone thinking commercially. Section 3 says that using kratom leaf as a raw material or ingredient in herbal products, medicines, food or cosmetics is governed by the separate laws for each of those product categories. So the plain leaf is free to grow and sell, but a kratom food, supplement, extract product or cosmetic still has to clear the relevant Thai FDA regime for that kind of product before it can go on sale. The Act’s own definition of “kratom leaf” in Section 4 expressly includes the brewed water of the leaf and extracts made from it.
What this means for a reader
For an adult in Thailand, buying, holding and consuming kratom leaf, including brewing it as a tea, is lawful. The main limits are these: it may not be sold to people under eighteen or to other protected groups, it may not be consumed mixed with other drugs, importing or exporting the leaf needs an ONCB licence, and any manufactured kratom product goes through the ordinary food, drug, herbal or cosmetic approval process.
Where Thailand sits in the region
Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia are all places where kratom grows and has been used for generations, and they have taken three different routes. Malaysia prohibits it. Indonesia has kept it legal and built a regulated export trade while its agencies continue to study the plant. Thailand went furthest of the three: it lifted a ban that had stood for decades and wrote kratom a law of its own.
How current this is
The dates and provisions above are taken from the two Royal Gazette instruments themselves, which are linked in the sources. We last checked them on the verification date at the top of this page. Much of the day-to-day detail, such as licence conditions and how kratom products are handled, sits in ministerial regulations and FDA notifications that can change. If you can point us to a later instrument that changes anything here, write to editorial@wikikratom.com and we will update the page and credit the correction.