The total ban died. 7-OH was scheduled anyway.
On 5 August 2026 the sale, use and possession of all kratom became unlawful in North Dakota by executive order — no committee, no vote. On 4 September the legislature finally voted, and refused to make it permanent, killing the total ban by a single vote. The bill signed in its place keeps natural leaf lawful at 21 and over. It also puts 7-OH in Schedule I, which is the one thing we said we could not accept.
What happened, in order
- 5 August 2026 — all kratom becomes unlawful by executive order, on a declared public health emergency. Nobody votes.
- 3 September — the House passes HB 1628, regulating natural leaf, 86–6. The Senate passes SB 2408, a permanent total ban on natural and synthetic kratom alike, 46–1.
- 4 September — the House kills the total ban, 46–47. The Senate then amends the synthetics ban into HB 1628 and passes it unanimously; the House concurs 91–2.
- 4 September — the Governor signs HB 1628, and a second executive order rescinds the first in its entirety.
So the emergency ban on leaf is gone, and it is gone because a chamber voted it down. That is worth saying plainly: showing up worked. What replaced it is a law we still cannot endorse, for a reason set out below.
How it started: two orders, no vote
Governor Kelly Armstrong and Attorney General Drew Wrigley announced executive action under a declared public health emergency. From 5 p.m. on 5 August 2026 it prohibited “the sale, use and possession of all kratom and kratom products in North Dakota.” Not concentrated 7-OH. Not extracts. All of it, including the leaf, and possession as well as sale. It stood for thirty days and was rescinded on 4 September.
Separately, the North Dakota Board of Pharmacy issued an emergency rule placing 7-OH in Schedule I. That rule runs for 180 days and starts an emergency rulemaking process of its own. The executive order was rescinded on 4 September; the statute now does the work the order was doing.
Neither instrument passed through a legislature. That is not a complaint about procedure for its own sake — it is the reason a shop owner in Bismarck had no hearing to attend, no bill number to look up and no representative to call before the thing took effect. There was nothing to watch. That is precisely what changed on 4 September, and it is why the outcome went the way it did: once there was a roll call, the total ban lost.
“Right now, it’s the Wild West when it comes to kratom and 7-OH sales in North Dakota: no regulations, no age limits, no accountability.”
He is right about the problem. North Dakota had no age limit, no labeling rule and no testing requirement — we would have said the same. But that is a description of an absence of regulation, and the answer to an absence of regulation is regulation. Prohibition is what you reach for when regulation has been tried and failed. It had not been tried here at all.
What passed, and what died
A Kratom Working Group produced two complementary drafts, and Legislative Management advanced both on 16–0 roll-call votes on 17 August. In the session they became HB 1628 and SB 2408. One is now law. The other is dead, and the surviving law absorbed most of it.
- SB 2408 — the permanent total ban. Defeated 46–47 in the House, 4 September. Would have outlawed natural and synthetic kratom alike and made kratom alkaloids Schedule I controlled substances, with penalties running to a Class C felony. It passed the Senate 46–1 and then failed in the House by one vote. Opponents said it had never had a proper hearing and that the people who use kratom for pain had been left out of the process.
- HB 1628 — Rep. Pat Heinert (R-Bismarck). Signed 4 September. Restricts sale to 21 and over. Requires labeling, including a warning that the product may be habit forming. Bans packaging that imitates candy or is otherwise marketed to appeal to children. Puts retailer licensing and enforcement under the Attorney General, and allocates $20,000 to the Department of Health and Human Services for youth public health outreach. Labels must state measured mitragynine and 7-OH levels, verified by a laboratory accredited and approved by the Attorney General. Selling without a licence is a Class B misdemeanor. Passed the House 86–6, then 91–2 as amended.
- The synthetics ban — Sen. Michelle Axtman (R-Bismarck). Folded into HB 1628 and enacted. Bans the sale, possession and use of synthetic kratom derivatives, naming 7-OH, MGM-15, MGM-16 and mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, and adds them to the state’s Schedule I. Drafted to reach derivatives that arrive in future. Penalties are tiered on the model of state marijuana law: an infraction for a first offense, a Class A misdemeanor for a second, and a Class C felony after that. This is the text the Senate amended into HB 1628 after its own standalone total ban failed.
Competing proposals that would have put kratom under the Department of Agriculture rather than the Attorney General were never brought forward for a vote.
Reporting on the enacted bill says it also limits 7-OH to 0.05% on a dry weight basis — the identical number the DEA has proposed federally. If the enrolled text says so, the argument on our federal page about what 0.05% actually reaches applies to North Dakota word for word.
A real win, and a provision we cannot endorse
The total ban was defeated by one vote, and that is a genuine win. A chamber of a legislature looked at prohibiting a plant outright and declined — after members said the bill had never had a proper hearing and that the people who use kratom for pain had been left out of it. The emergency order that criminalised possession of leaf is rescinded. A site that reports only losses teaches people that showing up does not work. Showing up did this.
The leaf provisions are close to what we ask for, and one is better than we expected. We had said the label should carry the measured alkaloid content from a tested batch rather than a bare warning — Section 13(c) of our model act. HB 1628 requires exactly that: mitragynine and 7-OH levels, verified by an accredited laboratory. The age limit, the licensing, the testing and the packaging rules are the things North Dakota was actually missing.
We still cannot endorse the law, because of what the Senate added to it. HB 1628 places 7-OH in North Dakota’s Schedule I, and 7-OH in any form is a protected alkaloid under our model act — Section 5(c) says origin alone is not a public-health finding, and Section 10 sends a genuinely novel alkaloid to premarket review rather than to Schedule I. Prohibiting an alkaloid is the tool we say should never be reached for. That objection does not soften because the bill is well drafted, because its sponsor argued carefully, or because it arrived bolted to provisions we like. That last part is the pattern worth naming: the good regulation and the scheduling rode in on one vehicle, so a legislator who wanted the age limit had no way to vote against the Schedule I listing.
The penalty structure compounds it. Reaching use and possession, and escalating to a Class C felony, is a decision about people rather than products. Kentucky’s ban — which we also oppose — at least stops at sale and distribution and does not criminalise possession. Louisiana’s reaches the person, and we say so there too. The graduated structure is a real mitigation and Sen. Axtman argued for it deliberately, to avoid felony charges falling on first-time offenders. It is still a felony at the end of it, for possessing an alkaloid a body produces from a legal leaf.
The other thing worth watching is drafting that reaches derivatives “that hit the market in the future.” Open-ended scheduling language is how a rule sold as narrow ends up covering something nobody had in mind when they voted for it.
The vote is over. The rules are not.
Nothing is on a shelf yet. All kratom sales stay prohibited until the Attorney General writes the licensing and testing rules, and reporting puts that at months — possibly not before March 2027. Everything that decides whether this law is workable sits in rules nobody has drafted: what a licence costs, which laboratories qualify, how a retailer demonstrates a batch complies.
That rulemaking is the live question in North Dakota now, and it is the part almost nobody watches. If you sold kratom before 5 August, the licensing terms decide whether you sell it again.
I am a constituent in [town]. On the kratom rules being written under HB 1628: please keep the licensing and testing requirements proportionate, so that small independent retailers can actually comply. Please make the required label state the measured alkaloid content plainly. And please tell me how a retailer is meant to show that a natural leaf product is compliant — that is the part that decides whether legal kratom is really available here.
The rules were expected around this point. This page needs a human. Check whether the Attorney General’s licensing and testing rules are final, whether natural kratom is actually being sold in North Dakota again, and update the map entry to match what is true rather than what was scheduled.
Read it yourself
The provisions of the enacted law are from the Governor’s own signing announcement. Vote counts are from roll-call reporting.
- Governor’s office: Armstrong signs HB 1628 (opens in a new tab) — signed 4 September 2026. The provision list, and the rescission of the executive order.
- North Dakota Monitor: the House kills the total ban (opens in a new tab) — the 46–47 roll call, and why members voted it down.
- Governor’s office: executive actions on kratom (opens in a new tab) — the order, the Board of Pharmacy rule, and the call for a special session.
- North Dakota Monitor: both drafts advance (opens in a new tab) — what each bill does, in the sponsors’ own words.
- KFGO: unanimous 16–0 votes (opens in a new tab) — the penalty tiers and the licensing detail.
- North Dakota on our map — current status and the instruments behind it.
What the enrolled text says. HB 1628 puts 7-OH in Schedule I above 0.05% on a dry-weight basis in leaf, and above 0.05% or 1 mg per article in extracts, concentrates, edibles and pills — the same line the DEA has proposed federally. Leaf that tests above it is itself Schedule I. The lawful market is pure leaf only: a licensee may not sell anything that contains kratom extract. And there is still no lawful kratom sale in North Dakota, because no licence can issue until the Attorney General adopts licensing and testing rules. The Board of Pharmacy’s separate emergency rule covers the same compounds and lapses around 1 February 2027 unless it is adopted as a final rule.