Look up a bill
Everything a legislature does is published. Not hidden, not paywalled — published, in full, usually within a day. Almost nobody reads it, which is exactly why the person who does gets taken seriously.
Two websites cover the whole country. Here is how to use them.
Work out whose bill it is
Federal and state legislation live in different places and behave differently. If the bill number starts with H.R. or S. it is federal. Anything else — HB, SB, AB, LD, LB — is a state bill.
This matters more than it sounds. Most kratom policy is decided by states, and a state bill can go from introduced to signed in a few weeks. Federal action is slower but applies everywhere at once.
HJR, SJR, HR, SR — those are resolutions, not bills. A resolution changes no law, which is exactly why it slips through: nothing comes off a shelf, there is nothing to sue over, and it looks like it is not worth a phone call.
Tennessee passed HJR 147 in May 2025, stating that kratom should be strictly regulated or banned. It bound nobody. Twelve months later the state banned kratom outright. The chamber had already had the argument, with only one side in the room.
A resolution is the warning shot. That is the moment to call — not the following session, when it is a bill with a year of on-the-record support behind it. Both Tennessee measures are here.
Congress.gov
Congress's own site. It is the authoritative source — not a mirror, not a summary — and it is free with no account.
- Search the bill number, or a word "H.R. 8000" gets you straight there. "kratom" gets you everything mentioning it — use the Congress filter on the left to limit it to the current one, or you will get twenty years of results.
- Read the summary, then don't trust it The summary is written by the Congressional Research Service and is genuinely neutral, but it is a summary. The Text tab has the actual bill. For a short bill, read the actual bill.
- Check Actions for where it is "Referred to the Committee on..." means it has not moved. That is where most bills stop. If the newest action is months old, the bill is probably dormant.
- Check Cosponsors for who is behind it Number and party. A bill with three cosponsors from one party is a statement; one with forty from both is a threat. And if your own rep is on the list, that is the call to make.
LegiScan
Fifty legislatures, fifty different websites, fifty different ways of numbering things. LegiScan puts them all in one place, free, no account needed for basic search.
- Search "kratom", then filter by state Nationwide search is the fastest way to see whether anything is happening near you. Sort by date to get the recent ones first.
- Look at Status, not just the title Introduced, Engrossed, Enrolled, Passed. "Engrossed" means it has already cleared one chamber — that is late, and worth acting on today.
- Follow the link to the legislature's own page LegiScan is a mirror. For the definitive text, hearing schedule and committee assignments, use the state's own site — LegiScan links to it on every bill.
- Watch for the same bill twice Most states run companion bills, one per chamber, with near-identical text and different numbers. Killing one does not kill the other.
Reading the bill itself
Legislation is written to be precise, not readable, and it is long because it has to say everything explicitly. You do not have to read all of it. Four questions get you most of the way, and you can answer them with your browser's find function.
- Is there a number in it? Search for "percent", "mg", "milligram", "ratio". A numeric limit on alkaloid content is a cap, whatever the bill is titled. That is the provision we oppose most often.
- Does it name a compound? Search "7-hydroxymitragynine", "synthetic", "semi-synthetic". Restricting something by how it was made rather than whether it is safe is the other common ban.
- Read the definitions section Usually section 2 or 3, and usually the most important part of the bill. West Virginia's SB 985 banned every kratom concentrate in the state without the word "ban" or a single number: it just amended the definition of "kratom product" to exclude anything concentrated beyond the leaf's natural profile. Read the definitions before you read anything else.
- Find the penalties and the date What happens if you break it, and when it starts. An effective date months out means there is time; one that says "upon passage" means there is not.
- Separate what it changes from what it inherits Most bills amend an existing act rather than starting fresh. Oklahoma's SB 891 is often blamed for that state's limits on 7-hydroxymitragynine — but those came from the act it amends, not from SB 891. If you object to a provision, check which bill actually wrote it. Otherwise you are calling the wrong sponsor about someone else's law.
An age limit we support and a potency cap we oppose can sit three pages apart in the same bill. "Do you support this bill" is usually the wrong question — which provisions are in it is the useful one, and it is the one you can answer yourself in ten minutes.