Six bills, and one of them is a single line
New Jersey has no kratom law today. Six bills would change that. They come in three identical Senate–Assembly pairs, and two of those pairs would prohibit it outright. The shortest bill of the six is one line long, and it is the one most likely to reach ordinary leaf without ever using the word.
Three pairs, read from the text
Every description on this page is taken from the bills themselves as published by the New Jersey Legislature, not from summaries of them. Each Senate bill below is word for word the same as its Assembly companion in everything that has legal effect.
- S829 / A1617 — “CJ’s Law,” the possession version. We oppose. Makes it a crime to sell kratom and a crime simply to have it. Sponsors: Sen. Robert W. Singer (co-sponsors Holzapfel, Moriarty, Corrado); Assemblymen Sean T. Kean and William B. Sampson IV (co-sponsors McGuckin, Karabinchak, Kanitra). Referred to Senate Judiciary and Assembly Consumer Affairs, 13 January 2026. No committee vote.
- S2271 / A1203 — “CJ’s Law,” the distribution version. We oppose. Makes it a crime to sell, or to hold with intent to sell, anything containing kratom, mitragynine “or any derivative.” Sponsors: Sens. M. Teresa Ruiz and Paul D. Moriarty (co-sponsors Holzapfel, Gopal); Assemblyman Alexander “Avi” Schnall and Assemblywoman Ellen J. Park (co-sponsors Haider, Drulis). Referred to Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary, 13 January 2026. No committee vote.
- S301 / A5359 — 7-OH into Schedule I. We oppose. One line. Sponsors: Sen. Shirley K. Turner; Assemblyman Michael Inganamort. The only one of the six to clear a committee: Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens reported S301 favourably on 16 March 2026 and it went to Budget and Appropriations. A5359 was introduced on 10 September 2026.
- S1384 / A4222 — a Kratom Consumer Protection Act. We would support it amended. An age limit, real labels and civil penalties — with a 7-OH cap and a synthetic alkaloid ban we would ask to have removed. Sponsors: Sens. Joseph A. Lagana and Jon M. Bramnick; Assemblywoman Carol A. Murphy and Assemblyman Anthony S. Verrelli (co-sponsor Bhalla). Referred to Senate Commerce and Assembly Consumer Affairs. No committee vote.
A line with no line drawn
The bills reprint the whole of New Jersey’s Schedule I, N.J.S.A. 24:21-5, and change one thing. Under subsection d. — “narcotic substances,” the list that includes heroin — they add a twenty-fourth entry:
(24) 7 Hydroxymitragynine.
That is the entire change. No threshold. No concentration. No carve-out for the 7-OH that occurs naturally in the plant. It takes effect immediately.
The absence is a choice, and the same section proves it. Two entries further down, the schedule lists tetrahydrocannabinols “except when found in hemp or a hemp product” grown under the Hemp Farming Act, or in legal cannabis. New Jersey’s drafters know exactly how to schedule a compound while protecting the plant it comes from. These bills do not.
The bills’ own statement knows the plant is in the picture. It says 7-OH is “naturally found in the Mitragyna speciosa plant” and that kratom “contains 7-OH in lower concentrations in its natural form.” The harms it describes are “higher concentrations” and “synthetic 7-OH.” The text reaches neither concentration nor synthesis. It reaches the molecule, wherever it is.
New Jersey’s criminal drug law, N.J.S.A. 2C:35-2, already defines a controlled dangerous substance to include “any drug or substance which, when ingested, is metabolized or otherwise becomes a controlled dangerous substance in the human body.” It goes on: “When any statute refers to … a specific controlled dangerous substance, it shall also be deemed to refer to any drug or substance which, when ingested, is metabolized or otherwise becomes … the specific controlled dangerous substance.”
Mitragynine, the main alkaloid in ordinary kratom leaf, is converted into 7-OH by your liver. Put 7-OH in Schedule I and that definition is sitting there waiting. The bill never has to mention kratom, mitragynine or leaf for a prosecutor to argue that all three are now covered.
We are careful about this, because it matters. No New Jersey court has applied that clause to kratom, and a court could read it more narrowly. But nothing in S301 or A5359 forecloses the broad reading — and a law that leaves the legality of a plant to a prosecutor’s choice of interpretation is a problem whichever way the first case goes.
What that would cost a person. The statement says manufacturing, distributing or possessing 7-OH with intent to distribute would be a crime of the second degree at one ounce or more and the third degree below that. Under N.J.S.A. 2C:35-5 those weights are counted “including any adulterants or dilutants” — the whole weight of the product, not the weight of the alkaloid in it.
“CJ’s Law,” in two versions
Both bills are named for Christopher James (CJ) Holowach, who died at 33 of cardiac arrest after taking a mix of drugs that, according to the bills’ statement, included his prescribed Adderall and kratom. The statement says the bottle he bought carried no warning label and no guidance on a safe amount. That is a real loss, and the problem it names — an unlabelled product with no dosing information — is a real problem.
S2271 / A1203 creates a new crime: to “manufacture, distribute, or dispense, or to possess or have under his control with intent to manufacture, distribute, or dispense substances containing kratom, mitragyna speciosa korth, or mitragynine, or any derivative of those chemical compounds.” At one ounce or more it is a crime of the second degree, which its statement puts at five to ten years and a fine of up to $150,000. Under an ounce, third degree: three to five years and up to $15,000. The only exemption is for licensed practitioners.
S829 / A1617 has the same selling offence and then adds one S2271 does not: it is a crime “knowingly or purposely, to obtain or to possess a substance containing kratom.” Possession of an ounce or more is a crime of the third degree; under an ounce, the fourth degree.
In both bills the ounce is measured “including adulterants and dilutants.” That makes the dividing line almost meaningless for a plant sold by the bag: a single ordinary retail bag of powder weighs well over an ounce, so the lower tier exists mostly on paper. And “any derivative” of mitragynine, in S2271, reaches every alkaloid the plant or the body makes from it.
The answer to a bottle with no label is a label. The bill that requires one is on this page too, and it is not either of these. One more thing worth knowing: the statement behind both CJ’s Law bills lists Rhode Island among the states where kratom is illegal. Rhode Island runs a licensed, legal market. The case for these bills was written from out-of-date information.
The regulation bill, and the two lines we would cut
The Kratom Consumer Protection Act is the only one of the six that treats kratom as a product to be made safe rather than a substance to be made illegal. Read from its text, it would:
- Bar sales to anyone under 21, with identification checks.
- Require every label to state the amount of mitragynine and 7-OH in the product, with directions and a recommended serving size — exactly the disclosure CJ Holowach’s bottle did not have.
- Prohibit products adulterated or contaminated with dangerous non-kratom substances, and extracts with residual solvents above USP-NF chapter 467.
- Enforce it with civil penalties — up to $500 for a first violation and $1,000 for a second — and a three-year ban on selling kratom after a third.
Two provisions we would ask to have taken out. Section 4(c) bans any product with 7-OH above 2% of the overall alkaloid composition, a potency cap that Section 13 of our model act rules out; the label it already requires is the better tool. Section 4(e) bans any synthetic alkaloid, which Section 5(c) rules out, because how a molecule was made is not by itself a public-health finding.
One detail shows its drafters saw the problem in the 7-OH bill. When this act borrows New Jersey’s metabolism language for its contamination rule, it writes “any other drug or non-kratom substance which, when ingested, is metabolized or otherwise becomes a controlled dangerous substance.” Whether or not that was the intent, it is the fix: a carve-out for the plant, written into the same clause that could otherwise sweep it in.
New Jersey is the far end of the threshold argument
Every 7-OH proposal in the country is really an argument about where to draw a line. The DEA proposed 0.05% of dry weight. Massachusetts’ regulation bill landed on the same number. The FDA’s own survey found up to 0.21% 7-OH in primarily whole-leaf products, so even those lines fall inside ordinary leaf — which is why we oppose a threshold at all.
S301 and A5359 are that problem with the argument removed. There is no line to debate, because none was drawn. We oppose them, and we oppose both versions of CJ’s Law, which prohibit the plant directly and, in S829 and A1617, criminalise the person holding it.
We would support S1384 and A4222 with the 2% cap and the synthetic alkaloid ban taken out. The age limit, the labeling, the contamination standards and the civil penalties are what New Jersey is actually missing, and they answer the problem CJ’s Law was written about better than prohibition does.
Before any of these reaches a vote
Only S301 has moved, and it is waiting in Budget and Appropriations. That is the time to be heard — before a committee schedules it, not after.
I am a constituent in [town]. Please oppose S301 and A5359. They add 7-OH to Schedule I with no threshold and no exemption for the plant, and New Jersey law already treats anything the body turns into a controlled substance as controlled itself — the main alkaloid in ordinary kratom leaf becomes 7-OH in the body. Please also oppose both versions of CJ’s Law. If you want to protect people, support the Kratom Consumer Protection Act, S1384 and A4222, with its age limit and alkaloid labeling, and take out the 2% cap and the synthetic ban so it regulates rather than prohibits.
Read it yourself
- S301 (opens in a new tab) and A5359 (opens in a new tab) — the full reprinted Schedule I, with the one addition at subsection d.(24).
- Senate Health committee statement on S301, 16 March 2026 (opens in a new tab)
- S829 (opens in a new tab) and A1617 (opens in a new tab) — CJ’s Law with the possession offence, at section 3.
- S2271 (opens in a new tab) and A1203 (opens in a new tab) — CJ’s Law, distribution only. S2271 also reprints the current text of N.J.S.A. 2C:35-2, including the metabolism clause quoted above.
- S1384 (opens in a new tab) and A4222 (opens in a new tab) — the Kratom Consumer Protection Act; the product limitations are section 4 and the penalties section 6.
- S2035 (opens in a new tab) — an unrelated bill that reprints N.J.S.A. 2C:35-5, where the “including any adulterants or dilutants” weight rule appears.
- What 7-OH actually is — including how the liver makes it from mitragynine.
- New Jersey on our map — green, because none of this is law yet.
Read 14 September 2026 from the bill texts as published by the Legislature. Two limits on that. We quote the criminal code as reprinted inside bills that amend it, because the statute databases would not load; the language matches across both reprints. And we have not read N.J.S.A. 2C:35-10, the general possession offence, so this page does not say what simple possession of 7-OH would carry under S301 and A5359.