North Dakota Bans Kratom by Emergency Order, Escalating a Fast-Moving State Crackdown

Governors have issued emergency orders for floods, blizzards, and pandemics. On Monday, North Dakota's Kelly Armstrong used one for a product sold next to the energy drinks at gas stations: kratom.

Standing alongside Attorney General Drew Wrigley in Bismarck, Armstrong announced a three-part executive action that makes North Dakota the most aggressive state yet in the rapidly escalating fight over kratom and its potent synthetic derivative, 7-hydroxymitragynine — better known as 7-OH. An emergency rule from the state Board of Pharmacy places 7-OH in Schedule 1 alongside heroin and LSD. A separate executive order declares a public health emergency and prohibits the sale, use, and possession of all kratom products in the state, effective 5 p.m. Wednesday, August 5. And the same order summons the legislature back to Bismarck for a special session on September 2 to write the ban into statute.

"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," Armstrong said. "We're taking emergency action to press pause and get these products off the shelves until the Legislature can address the issue."

What the Ban Actually Does

The structure matters, because the two prongs reach different substances. The pharmacy board's emergency rule targets only 7-OH, the concentrated synthetic compound that federal regulators have spent the summer trying to corral. It lasts 180 days and kicks off an expedited administrative rulemaking process. The governor's executive order goes much further, sweeping in natural kratom leaf, mitragynine, and every product containing them — the powders, capsules, gummies, and flavored drinks that have spread through convenience stores and smoke shops with no purchase age at all.

That breadth is what distinguishes North Dakota from the states that have moved before it. Ten states have banned kratom outright, and many more have restricted mitragynine or 7-OH specifically, according to the governor's office. But most acted through ordinary legislation. Armstrong is doing it by decree, on the theory that waiting for the regular session — seven or eight months away — would leave the market open through the fall.

Senate Majority Leader David Hogue, who appeared at the press conference, endorsed the shortcut. Kratom, he said, "is not a supplement; it is an opioid acting drug, sold with no consistent age check or dosage standard." Waiting for the normal bill process, he added, carried costs that were "too high."

Fifty Deaths and a Testing Gap

The state's case rests in part on mortality data that is still catching up with the market. Since 2019, North Dakota's Department of Health and Human Services has received reports of 50 deaths associated with kratom, 7-OH, or a third derivative called pseudoindoxyl mitragynine. In 23 of those cases the substances were part of the primary cause of death; in 26 more they appeared in toxicology results.

There's a caveat buried in those numbers that cuts both ways: North Dakota only began routinely testing for 7-OH last September. That means the earlier figures almost certainly undercount the compound's role — and also that the state's understanding of the problem is barely a year old. Public health officials elsewhere have described the same blind spot. Most standard toxicology panels don't flag kratom alkaloids at all, which is one reason national estimates of kratom-involved deaths vary so widely.

Why 7-OH Changed the Politics

Kratom itself — leaf from a Southeast Asian tree, brewed as tea or packed into capsules — has occupied a gray zone in American drug policy for a decade. At low doses it acts as a stimulant; at high doses it produces opioid-like sedation. Advocates, including some people who use it to manage pain or ease off opioids, have argued that regulating the leaf makes more sense than banning it.

Concentrated 7-OH products scrambled that debate. The compound binds opioid receptors far more aggressively than natural mitragynine, and it arrives in precisely the packaging — gummies, shots, fruit-flavored drinks — that regulators associate with marketing to teenagers. The FDA has called synthetic 7-OH a candidate for the next wave of the opioid crisis and demanded "immediate and impactful policies." The Department of Defense bans kratom use by service members outright.

A Federal Floor Arrives the Same Week

North Dakota's timing is not coincidental. Armstrong's office explicitly framed the emergency rule as consistent with the DEA's move, announced in July, to place 7-OH and three related substances into Schedule 1 — an order that could take effect as early as August 5, the same day the state ban begins. As we reported when the federal scheduling was announced, the DEA's temporary order covers the synthetic derivatives for at least two years but leaves natural kratom leaf untouched.

That gap — a federal floor covering 7-OH and nothing above it — is exactly what statehouses have been racing to fill, in both directions. Tennessee and Kansas enacted bans just last month. Kentucky's prohibition takes effect January 1, 2027. Minnesota went the other way last week, raising the purchase age to 21 rather than banning the products, as poison center calls climbed. Local governments from Dare County, North Carolina to Peabody, Massachusetts have passed their own rules targeting concentrated and synthetic formulations. The result is a regulatory patchwork in which a product that is legal to sell to a minor in one state is a Schedule 1 felony a state line away.

The Uncomfortable Question: What Happens to Users

Bans are easy to announce and harder to land, and treatment providers watching the crackdown have raised a consistent concern. A meaningful share of regular kratom users take it daily — some for pain, some for mood, and some, according to survey research, as an improvised substitute for opioids or a self-managed withdrawal aid. Physiological dependence on mitragynine is real, and abrupt cessation produces a withdrawal syndrome that clinicians describe as opioid-like, if usually milder.

When a product disappears from shelves with 48 hours' notice, daily users don't simply stop; they taper badly, substitute something else, or seek care. North Dakota's announcement acknowledged the issue only obliquely, directing consumers worried about dependence or withdrawal to the 988 crisis line and the 211 referral helpline. For people whose use has crossed into a substance use disorder — kratom's opioid-receptor activity means it responds to some of the same treatment approaches used for opioid addiction — the practical question is whether the state's treatment infrastructure sees a bump in calls come Thursday.

Clinicians who work with kratom-dependent patients note that medication-assisted treatment with buprenorphine has been used off-label for severe kratom withdrawal, though evidence remains thin and largely anecdotal. What research does exist suggests most dependent users can taper without medication — but "most" is cold comfort in a state with some of the longest travel distances to addiction care in the country.

What September Will Decide

The special session on September 2 is where the emergency order either becomes durable policy or expires into a lawsuit. Armstrong has asked legislators to do three things: ratify the pharmacy board's 7-OH scheduling, write the kratom prohibition into state law, and sort out enforcement authority — a genuine open question, since the executive order's prohibition on "use and possession" would, if codified, make North Dakota's law harsher than most state bans, which typically criminalize sale and distribution rather than personal possession.

Retailers, meanwhile, have weeks of inventory and days of legal clarity. The governor's office advised them to review stock, contact suppliers, and pull affected products before Wednesday evening. Smoke shop owners interviewed by local stations described the order as a shock arriving with almost no warning — which, of course, is the point of an emergency action.

What North Dakota has done this week is less a finished policy than a bet: that the legislature will ratify in September what the governor decreed in August, and that the public health emergency framing will survive the legal and political scrutiny that kratom bans have attracted elsewhere. If it holds, the state will have gone from the least regulated kratom market in America to one of the most restrictive in under a month. The states watching closest are the ones where similar bills died in committee this spring — several of which are already drafting for their own January sessions.