Oregon’s kratom statute is short and its testing rule is detailed. Both follow from the same drafting choice: the legislature set an age limit and a registration duty, and left everything about the product itself to the Department of Revenue to write.
Kratom leaf, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine are not controlled substances in Oregon, and possessing a kratom product is not an offence. Sale to anyone under 21 is a crime, and a wholesaler who has not registered with the tax authority is liable to a civil penalty. There is a live question about three other compounds, set out at the end of this page.
The statute
Section 475.392 of the Oregon Revised Statutes says that sections 475.394 to 475.404 shall be known as the Oregon Kratom Consumer Protection Act. The short-title section sits outside the range it names. All seven sections were enacted as chapter 41 of the 2022 Oregon Laws.
The printed statutes carry a note on each of them saying they “were enacted into law by the Legislative Assembly but were not added to or made a part of ORS chapter 475 or any series therein by legislative action”. They are printed in chapter 475 for convenience and are not part of it. That is a formality rather than a limit on their effect. It explains why they sit in the chapter’s miscellaneous retail-age group, immediately after the nitrous oxide provision at 475.390 and the dextromethorphan and 1,1-difluoroethane provisions before it, rather than anywhere near the drug scheduling sections at the front of the chapter.
Kratom product is defined at 475.394(1) as a food, food product, food ingredient, dietary ingredient, dietary supplement or beverage for human consumption containing any part of the leaf of the plant Mitragyna speciosa.
A processor sells, distributes or exposes kratom products for sale on a wholesale basis to a retailer. A retailer sells to individuals for personal consumption. The two are regulated differently, and neither definition covers a consumer.
What the statute does, in full
Age. Section 475.398 prohibits a retailer from selling, distributing or exposing a kratom product for sale to anyone under 21. A retailer who does is guilty of a Class C misdemeanour for each violation.
Registration. Section 475.396 prohibits a processor from selling, distributing or exposing a kratom product for sale before registering with the Department of Revenue under section 475.404. The penalty is civil: up to $500 for a first offence and up to $1,000 for a second or subsequent one, appealable as a contested case under ORS chapter 183.
Rulemaking. Section 475.404 requires the Department of Revenue to adopt rules including procedures for annual registration, a requirement that a processor certify that all its kratom products are third-party tested to satisfy industry standards for adulteration, and a reasonable registration fee that may not exceed the cost of administering and enforcing the Act.
That is the whole of the substantive scheme in the Act. It contains no labelling rule, no ceiling on 7-hydroxymitragynine, no ban on synthetic alkaloids and no prohibition on adulterated product.
That is not the same as saying Oregon imposes none of those things. The Act defines a kratom product as a food, food ingredient, dietary supplement or beverage, which puts it inside Oregon’s general food law. Section 616.205(10) defines food in those terms; section 616.215 prohibits manufacturing, selling or holding for sale any food that is adulterated or misbranded; section 616.235 defines adulteration; and section 616.250 deems a food misbranded unless its label carries the name and place of business of the manufacturer, packer or distributor, an accurate statement of net quantity, the common or usual name of the food and the common name of each ingredient. OAR 603-025-0190 adopts the FDA’s federal food and labelling regulations as Oregon rules on top of that.
So a kratom product sold in Oregon carries the label duties of any food. What Oregon does not have is any rule, anywhere, requiring the alkaloid content to be declared or capped.
The regulator is a tax agency
The Department of Revenue collects Oregon’s taxes. It is not a health or food safety body, and the Act gives it the entire kratom brief: registration, fees, testing standards and penalties. Sections 475.400 and 475.402 make the point explicit by routing kratom money through a suspense account under ORS 293.445 and applying the deficiency, assessment, collection, lien, refund and appeal machinery of ORS chapters 305 and 314 to kratom registration fees and civil penalties.
We note this because it changes where a reader should look. Oregon’s kratom rules are in the Department of Revenue’s division of the administrative rules, not in the Health Authority’s.
The rules, which are where the substance is
The Department adopted OAR 150-475-6010 to 150-475-6030 on 10 May 2023, effective 1 June 2023.
Registration. Every kratom processor selling, distributing or exposing kratom products for sale in Oregon must file an annual registration form. Since 1 July 2023 a processor may not sell, distribute or expose kratom products for sale on a wholesale or retail basis without first holding a certificate of registration. The annual fee is $460, reviewed annually, and it is non-refundable once the registration is complete. The Department will not even review a registration unless the processor certifies that all its products will be third-party tested.
Testing. OAR 150-475-6020 requires that a minimum of 0.5% by volume of every batch be tested by a third party. A batch of unfinished kratom may be no larger than 1,000 pounds. A product formulation batch of finished product is everything of one formulation made on the same day in the same facility.
Each batch must be tested for five classes of contaminant, and the rule adopts the standards already written for a different regulated crop:
- microbiological contaminants, to OAR 333-007-0390;
- pesticides, to OAR 333-007-0400;
- solvents, to OAR 333-007-0410;
- heavy metals, to OAR 333-007-0415; and
- mycotoxins, to OAR 333-007-0425.
A dangerous non-kratom substance is defined circularly and usefully at 150-475-6010(1)(a) as any substance in a product that exceeds the amount allowed by the testing rule. The limits are the definition.
Records of third-party test results must be kept for three years, or for as long as the processor holds the product, whichever is longer, and produced to the Department on request.
A processor buying from another registered Oregon processor may rely on that processor’s tests, either by keeping copies of the results or by keeping invoices bearing the seller’s registration certificate number and a statement that everything on the invoice was tested. A processor who converts unfinished product into finished product must test the finished product itself.
What this means for a reader
Oregon tests for what might have got into a product and does not measure how strong it is. We found no requirement in the Act, in the Department of Revenue’s rules or in the general food rules that the alkaloid content of a kratom product be declared, and no limit on 7-hydroxymitragynine at any concentration.
So a heavily concentrated kratom extract sold in Oregon faces the same heavy metals and pesticide testing as leaf powder, and no potency rule at all. That is close to the opposite of what Utah, Oklahoma and Maryland do: each of those caps 7-OH and requires the amount on the label, and none of their statutes contains a contaminant testing duty of the kind Oregon has written into its rules.
Kratom is not scheduled in Oregon
Oregon’s Schedule I is at OAR 855-080-0021, made by the Board of Pharmacy. It works by reference: Schedule I consists of the substances listed in 21 CFR 1308.11, in the version dated 1 April 2025, plus a list of additional substances and several structural classes set out in the rule.
Neither kratom, Mitragyna speciosa, mitragynine nor 7-hydroxymitragynine appears in the added list, and none of them is in the federal Schedule I. We read the whole of division 80 to check that, and confirmed that the division renders its rules rather than returning an empty page.
Three other compounds, and a question we cannot close
On 26 August 2026 the DEA published a temporary scheduling order placing mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, MGM-15 and MGM-16 in federal Schedule I, effective that day until 26 August 2028. The DEA describes them as 7-hydroxymitragynine-related substances. This is a temporary order, not a permanent rule, and it is a separate action from the DEA’s July notice of intent about concentrated 7-OH, which remains a proposal.
Whether those three are controlled in Oregon today is genuinely unsettled, and it turns on which instrument you read.
The Board’s rule pins the federal list to the edition of 1 April 2025. The Board amended OAR 855-080-0021 on 17 June 2026 and kept that date, so the pin looks deliberate rather than neglected. On that route, an August 2026 federal addition is not in Oregon’s Schedule I.
But ORS 475.005(6)(a) defines a controlled substance for the whole chapter as “a drug or its immediate precursor classified in Schedules I through V under the federal Controlled Substances Act, 21 U.S.C. 811 to 812, as modified under ORS 475.035”. That reference carries no edition date. Read on its own terms it points at the federal schedules as they stand.
There is a third route we have not tried to close either. ORS 475.005 defines a controlled substance analog, and the definition turns on chemical similarity and effect rather than on any list. Whether it reaches any of the three is a question about chemistry and a statutory test, and it is not ours to answer.
We are not going to tell a reader which of those readings an Oregon court would take. What we will say is that anyone holding one of those three specific compounds in Oregon should not treat this page’s opening sentence as covering them. It covers the plant, mitragynine and 7-OH, which is what the Board’s list and the federal list both settle.
How we checked this
We read sections 475.392 to 475.404 and section 475.005 as printed in the Oregon Revised Statutes, OAR 150-475-6010, 150-475-6020 and 150-475-6030 as adopted, and the whole of OAR chapter 855 division 80. We checked the general food provisions in ORS chapter 616 and OAR 603-025-0190 rather than assuming the Act was the only thing that reaches a kratom label.
We checked that division 80 is current as well as rendered. Mephedrone, the JWH synthetic cannabinoids, etizolam and the substituted fentanyl class are all in it, so the text is not a pre-2015 snapshot.
If a later act or rule changes any of this, write to editorial@wikikratom.com and we will update the page and credit the correction.