July 2026: Two More States Closed, One Reopened, and the Split Nobody Is Separating

By Kemal Whyte, founder and CEO of Rebel X Brands.

Published 31 July 2026.

On the first of this month two more states closed and a federal agency moved. If you only read the headlines you would conclude the industry is being shut down. That is not what happened, and the difference between what happened and what people think happened is worth real money to anybody stocking a shelf.

Here is the actual state of play, with sources, and the one distinction that now determines whether a market is open or closed to you.

What changed on 1 July

Kansas closed. Senate Bill 430 added both mitragynine and 7-OH to Schedule I of the state's controlled substances act, listed under opiates. Because the scheduled compound includes mitragynine, the dominant alkaloid in ordinary leaf, this reaches powder and capsules, not just concentrates. There is no grandfathering. Product bought legally before the first is not legal to hold there now.

One trap worth naming: Kansas also had a genuine Kratom Consumer Protection Act on the table this session, and it died in committee. If somebody tells you Kansas passed a KCPA, they are looking at the wrong bill.

Tennessee closed, and reversed itself doing it. Public Chapter 950, from HB 1649, known as Matthew Davenport's Law, makes kratom a Schedule I substance. Nashville's Metro Beer Permit Board put the practical terms plainly to retailers: possession is a Class A misdemeanour, sale a Class C felony, and sale to a minor a Class B felony. What makes Tennessee worth studying is where it came from. Before this, Tennessee permitted regulated sales to adults 21 and over. A competing bill would have kept whole leaf legal while capping concentrates. It died without a floor vote. So a state with a working framework went from regulated to prohibited in one session.

The DEA moved on 7-OH, and the detail is the whole story. On 1 July the DEA filed two Notices of Intent to temporarily place 7-hydroxymitragynine and several related synthetics into Schedule I. Note what that is and is not: a notice of intent to schedule temporarily, not a final rule.

The threshold is the part nobody quotes. The Federal Register notice applies to material above 0.050% 7-OH by dry weight, or 1.00 mg total. Below that, it is not covered. Natural leaf sits below it. HHS and FDA said the same thing in their own words the same day: the action is not intended to regulate natural leaf kratom that does not contain enhanced levels of 7-OH.

The thing almost nobody is separating

Read those three items again and the pattern is right there. Kansas and Tennessee banned the plant. The federal government went after the isolated compound and explicitly left the plant alone.

That is the split, and it is now the single most important question to ask about any jurisdiction: did they ban kratom, or did they ban concentrated 7-OH? Those are completely different market outcomes and they are being reported as the same story.

Ohio is the cleanest example of why this matters. Ohio's Board of Pharmacy rule became permanent on 19 May 2026 and it prohibits 7-OH, mitragynine pseudoindoxyl and related synthetics. It also expressly exempts natural kratom in vegetation form, whole or ground dried leaf, including the trace 7-OH that occurs there naturally. If you read the headline and marked Ohio closed, you took yourself out of a state that is open to leaf.

Florida, Virginia, Utah, New York, Colorado and Mississippi have all landed in roughly the same place through different routes: restrict the concentrate, regulate the leaf, set the age at 21. That is not prohibition. That is the industry getting the rules it said it wanted, and a lot of operators are still reading it as a loss.

And one state went the other way

Rhode Island reopened on 1 April. It is, as far as I can establish, the first state ever to reverse a kratom ban.

It did not reopen as a free market. The Rhode Island Department of Health's licensing framework is one of the strictest in the country: four separate licence classes for manufacturers, distributors, importers and retailers, sales restricted to 21 and over, and hard product caps of 150 mg of mitragynine and 1 mg of 7-OH per serving, plus heavy-metal limits and a ban on packaging that could appeal to children.

Two things follow. First, a national vendor could walk into Rhode Island assuming reopened means open and be non-compliant on day one. Second, and more usefully, a ban is not permanent. Rhode Island proves the direction of travel can reverse when the alternative is an unregulated market nobody can see into.

A warning, because it cost me time this month: several widely used national trackers still list Rhode Island as fully banned. The state health department's own licensing page is the authority. Do not take a tracker's word for a market being closed.

California, which is neither of the things people say it is

California gets described as having banned kratom. It did not, and the detail matters.

There is no statute. Nothing is scheduled. Possessing or using kratom in California is not a criminal offence. What exists is an agency action: in October 2025 the state health department declared that foods, supplements and drug products containing kratom and 7-OH are illegal to sell or manufacture. And it has been enforced. By March the state was reporting inspections at more than 4,500 licensed locations, over 3,300 products pulled, and 95 percent compliance.

So for a business, California is closed. For a consumer, it is not prohibited. Those two sentences are both true at once, which is why a three-colour map struggles with it and why I would rather write the paragraph than trust the tile. The bill that would have regulated and taxed instead, AB 1088, has not passed. Its hearing was pulled at the author's request in June.

What I would actually do with this

If you sell, three things this week. Re-check every state you ship into against the primary source, not an aggregator, and specifically re-check the ones you believe are closed, because Ohio and Rhode Island are both open in ways the trackers get wrong. Separate your catalogue by leaf and concentrate, because that line is now the line the law cares about, and a business that cannot make that distinction on its own shelf cannot make it on a compliance form either. And read Rhode Island's framework properly, because when other states reopen, they will not reopen into a free market, they will reopen into something that looks a lot like that.

If you buy, the practical version is shorter. Your state's status may have changed twice in the last year. Check before you order, check the city as well as the state, and understand whether what you are buying is leaf or concentrate, because those are increasingly two different legal products. Then check the paperwork on the product itself, which I break down in how to read a certificate of analysis.

One more thing worth watching. HHS opened a request for information asking whether 0.050% is even the right threshold, with a comment window that closes today, 31 July 2026. Whatever comes back will shape where that line finally sits, and that line is now the border between two industries.

I keep a state-by-state map and a bill tracker on this site, and I have just finished re-verifying every state that changed in the last eighteen months against primary sources. You can find it on the industry intel page. It will be wrong eventually, because this is moving faster than anything I publish. When you are making a decision with money attached, verify with a lawyer in that jurisdiction. I mean that as advice, not as a disclaimer.

Disclaimer: This article summarises publicly reported legal developments as of 31 July 2026 and links to primary sources so you can check them yourself. It is general commentary, not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for counsel in your jurisdiction. Laws in this area change quickly and local rules may differ from state rules. Nothing here is a health claim, and statements about botanical products have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.

Written by Kemal Whyte, founder and CEO of Rebel X Brands, Austin, Texas.