Yours will be better than ours because it is yours. Change a word, say where you live, and stop — ninety seconds is a long call.
I am a constituent and I am asking you to oppose H. 4641 as amended, now in Senate Medical Affairs. Please read the two sections together. SECTION 1 keeps the Kratom Consumer Protection Act and amends it, so licensed retailers may still sell kratom products to adults over 21. SECTION 2 puts mitragynine and 7-OH into Schedule I, and mitragynine is in every kratom product there is. The state cannot license the sale of a product and schedule its active ingredient in the same bill. I would also ask what “substantially chemically equivalent to kratom” means, because kratom is a plant and nothing is chemically equivalent to a plant. Please keep the consumer protection act, strike SECTION 2, and require lab testing and honest labels instead.
Read from the version amended 29 April 2026 — not the introduced text, and not the summary. The bill changed substantially in committee and on the floor.
SECTION 2 adds subsection (G) to Section 44-53-190, the Schedule I list: any alkaloid, salt, isomer, compound, derivative, precursor, homologue, analogue or other preparation “substantially chemically equivalent or identical to kratom”, expressly including mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine.
SECTION 1 amends Section 44-53-2020(A), which sits inside the South Carolina Kratom Consumer Protection Act — so the amended bill KEEPS that Act rather than repealing it. The bill's title still says it repeals Article 20; the text carries an instruction to amend the title to conform.
Within that retained Act, the amendment narrows the existing adulteration ban from “synthetic” to “fully synthetic” alkaloids, and adds a residual solvent limit tied to Chapter 467 of the U.S. Pharmacopeia.
The 21-and-over sale restriction, the adulteration and contamination bans, and the labeling requirement all survive in the retained Act.
SECTION 3 makes it effective on the Governor's approval, with no transition period.
It passed the House 87-7 on second reading and 98-4 on third, and now sits in the Senate Committee on Medical Affairs.
The engrossed text reads “a an fully synthetic alkaloid”, an artefact of the amendment that has not been cleaned up.
Read the text
Every version, newest first, linked to the legislature's own copy rather than a third-party mirror. The newest one is the text that matters; the older ones show what changed and when, which is often where the real story is.
The bill that passed the House is not the bill that was introduced, and two of the changes went in a direction we asked for. Saying so costs us nothing and makes the rest of the objection credible.
It no longer repeals the Kratom Consumer Protection Act. The introduced version did; this one amends it instead.
Narrowing the adulteration ban from “synthetic” to “fully synthetic” stops it catching semi-synthetic and converted alkaloids.
The residual solvent limit tied to USP-NF Chapter 467 is a genuine safety standard about how a product is made, and we would keep it.
The 21-and-over restriction and the labeling requirement are retained.
What our model act does instead
We are not asking anyone to do nothing. Every objection below comes with the clause we would put in its place — the full text is here.
§5
Scope of Protection and Regulation
The two halves of this bill contradict each other. SECTION 1 preserves and amends a consumer protection act that licenses processors and retailers to sell kratom products to adults. SECTION 2 puts mitragynine — the principal alkaloid in every kratom product ever sold — into Schedule I, the class reserved for substances with no accepted medical use and high potential for abuse. A state cannot coherently license the retail sale of a product whose active ingredient it has simultaneously scheduled. Whichever result the Senate wants, this text does not deliver it cleanly, and somebody will litigate the gap.
§3
Definitions
“Substantially chemically equivalent or identical to kratom” is not a definition a chemist can apply. Kratom is a plant, not a compound; nothing is chemically equivalent to a plant. The companion bill H. 4636 at least defines kratom as any part of the plant, which is coherent even where we disagree with it. This one leaves the operative phrase undefined while attaching Schedule I consequences to it.
§13
No Alkaloid Caps; Mandatory Disclosure
Scheduling the alkaloids reaches every kratom product regardless of potency — there is no threshold anywhere in SECTION 2. Section 13 of our model act asks for the concentration to be measured, disclosed and verified, which is the response to a potency concern that leaves a lawful, tested product on the shelf.
§20
Penalties
Schedule I places the consequence on possession, and therefore on the person using the product. Section 20 puts penalties on the registered business that breaks a rule. That difference decides whether an unsafe seller loses a licence or a customer acquires a criminal record.
Who is behind it
Sponsors are not the enemy and treating them as one wastes the call. They put their name to this because somebody convinced them it would help; the job is to be the person who tells them what it will actually do. If one of them represents you, your call on this bill carries more weight than anyone else's — check whether they do.
