Mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine are both Schedule I controlled substances in Arkansas. Possessing either one is a felony at any weight, and the state has treated them this way since November 2015.
Arkansas reached that position without using the word kratom anywhere in its controlled substances list. The list names the two alkaloids and nothing else, so the plant, the leaf and the powder are caught through their contents rather than by name. Arkansas legislators do use the word; the list does not.
Where the entries are, and what sits beside them
The operative document is the List of Controlled Substances published by the Arkansas Department of Health, adopted by the Arkansas State Board of Health on 24 October 2024 after a public hearing on 7 January 2025. It is promulgated under Arkansas Code sections 5-64-201 and 5-64-216, which give the Department the scheduling power.
Schedule I in that list is divided by drug class. The two kratom alkaloids are items (24) and (25) of subsection (c), Opium derivatives: (Narcotic Drugs). The entries immediately above them are myrophine, nicocodeine, nicomorphine, normorphine, pholcodine and thebacon, which are all derived from opium.
Kratom is not an opium product. Mitragyna speciosa is a tree in the coffee family, and its alkaloids are not made from the opium poppy. The classification is a legal placement, not a botanical claim, and it does not change what the listing does: a substance in Schedule I is a Schedule I controlled substance whichever subsection it was filed under. We report the placement because it is what the document says, and because anyone searching the Arkansas list for a plant or a hallucinogen will look in the wrong subsection and find nothing.
The date, and how to read it
Most entries in the Arkansas list carry a DEA Controlled Substances Code Number in the right hand column. The two kratom entries carry (11-2015) instead.
That notation is the month the substance was placed in the schedule, and the Department says so itself rather than leaving it to be inferred. The covering page of its November 2015 filing reads: Next to the code number is the date the substance was placed in schedule by the Director of the Arkansas Department of Health.
The notations run throughout the document, on entries placed between 1979 and 2022, and some
entries carry both a federal code and a date. Alpha-pyrrolidinopentiophenone, better known as
alpha-PVP, is listed as 7545-(11-2015), so the federal code and the Arkansas date are recorded
independently of each other.
The two kratom alkaloids carry no federal code, and separately from that, neither is federally scheduled. The missing code does not by itself prove the second point, because the same Arkansas list shows federally controlled nitazenes with no code either, so the federal regulation was read directly. As at 16 September 2026, Schedule I at 21 CFR 1308.11 contains mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, MGM-15 and MGM-16, all of them derivatives, and contains no entry for mitragynine, for 7-hydroxymitragynine, or for Mitragyna speciosa.
So Arkansas placed the two alkaloids in Schedule I in November 2015. The filing that did it is Docket 007.07.15-002, published in the Arkansas Register for November 2015, and the list attached to it already carries items (24) Mitragynine and (25) 7-Hydroxymitragynine.
Accounts dating the Arkansas ban to February 2016 are common. Neither the November 2015 filing nor the current list supports them.
What possession carries
This is the part the classification alone does not answer, and the distinction matters. A scheduling instrument says what a substance is. A separate statute says what happens to a person who holds it.
Arkansas Code section 5-64-419(a), created by Act 570 of 2011, states that except as provided by the chapter, it is unlawful for a person to possess a controlled substance. The penalties in subsection (b) were amended by Act 887 of 2021. Mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine fall in the band for a Schedule I substance that is not methamphetamine, fentanyl, heroin or cocaine:
- Less than 2 g: Class D felony
- 2 g or more but less than 28 g: Class C felony
- 28 g or more but less than 200 g: Class B felony
There is no misdemeanour tier for a Schedule I or Schedule II substance, and no personal-use exception. The section does create Class A misdemeanour tiers, but only for the lower schedules: subsection (b)(3) for Schedule III below 2 g, (b)(4) for Schedule IV and V below 28 g, and (b)(5) for Schedule VI below four ounces. None of them reaches kratom. The lowest band in Arkansas for these two substances is a felony.
Supply is separate and heavier. Both supply provisions were rewritten by Act 887 of 2021, so the older carve-out naming only methamphetamine and cocaine is no longer the operative text.
Section 5-64-426, as amended, is headed Delivery of a Schedule I or Schedule II controlled substance that is not methamphetamine, fentanyl, heroin, or cocaine, and its subsection (a) routes those four substances to sections 5-64-421 and 5-64-422 instead. Kratom’s alkaloids sit in the residual band, where delivering less than 2 g is a Class C felony and 2 g to 28 g is a Class B felony.
Section 5-64-424, also as amended by Act 887, covers possession with the purpose to deliver. The statute says that purpose to deliver may be shown by any of the following factors, among them possessing the means to weigh, separate or package the substance, and possessing a record indicating a drug-related transaction.
The weight question we cannot answer
Every band above is measured by aggregate weight, including an adulterant or diluent. That phrase decides how much trouble a given jar of leaf powder represents, and we are not able to settle it from the documents we read.
Dried kratom leaf is mostly leaf. Mitragynine is a small percentage of it. So the two readings are far apart: if the aggregate weight is the weight of the whole powder, a few grams of leaf is already in Class C felony territory, and if it is the weight of the alkaloid, the same jar is far below the bottom band.
The statutory text points toward the first reading, because a provision that counts adulterants and diluents is written to capture a mixture rather than a pure substance. But that is our reading of the words and not a holding. We did not find an Arkansas appellate decision applying the phrase to plant material containing a scheduled alkaloid, and section 5-64-419 does not define the term. A reader should not assume the lower reading. Anyone who needs this question answered for a real situation needs an Arkansas lawyer, not a website.
What this means in practice
Arkansas is one of the stricter US states on kratom. Both alkaloids are Schedule I, possession of any quantity is a felony on the face of the statute, and there is no consumer-protection regime because the state took the prohibition route instead. Nothing we read provides an exemption for a botanical product, a food, a supplement, or personal use.
This page reads Arkansas state law only. Federal law is a separate question and is covered on our United States page.
How we checked this
The Department of Health list has a real text layer, so it did not need optical character recognition, unlike Alabama’s equivalent document.
Two greps confirmed we were reading a live and current list rather than a stale or unrendered one. Cocaine and fentanyl appear, which proves the schedule rendered. Bromazolam, ADB-BUTINACA, isotonitazene, metonitazene, brorphine, flualprazolam and etazene all appear, which proves the text is current rather than a decade-old edition: every one of those was first controlled after 2019.
The statutory provisions were read from the session laws published by the Arkansas General Assembly rather than from a commercial reproduction of the Code. Reading the act that created a section is not enough on its own, and an earlier draft of this page got that wrong: it described sections 5-64-424 and 5-64-426 from Act 570 of 2011, which created them, without checking Act 887 of 2021, which rewrote both. The carve-out really had changed. Where this page states a statutory provision, it now states the version from the most recent amending act.
Two limits are worth stating plainly. We did not establish whether any provision of chapter 64 outside section 5-64-419 defines aggregate weight or adulterant or diluent. And the statement that no Arkansas appellate decision applies that phrase to plant material rests on open-web searching, not on a case-law database.