A New Hampshire House committee on Tuesday gave a positive recommendation to legislation that would ban the sale or possession of high-potency synthetic and semi-synthetic kratom products, marking the most significant attempt yet by Granite State lawmakers to crack down on a class of unregulated extracts that public health officials and law enforcement have begun comparing to street opioids. The vote moves the bill toward a full House decision and a likely conference with the Senate, which has already approved its own version of regulation, as reported by NHPR through reporting originally produced by The Keene Sentinel and distributed through the Granite State News Collaborative.
The legislation, tracked at the State House as bill 1335, draws a line that has been the subject of fierce debate inside the kratom industry itself: it would not ban the leaf-based teas and powders that have circulated through head shops, herbal stores and coffee bars in New Hampshire for years, but it would outlaw concentrated formulations exceeding 1,000 parts per million by dry weight of 7-hydroxymitragynine, the alkaloid responsible for the most intense psychoactive effects of the plant. Governor Kelly Ayotte has indicated support for tighter kratom oversight, meaning the bill would have a clear path to her desk if it survives reconciliation between the two chambers.
What the Bill Actually Does
The amendment authored by Representative Joe Sweeney, a Salem Republican, was designed to thread a difficult policy needle. Kratom in its natural leaf form is sold in the state as a tea ingredient and is often consumed by people seeking pain relief, an energy boost or a way to manage symptoms of opioid withdrawal. Banning that product outright would have collided with a sizable population of users — including many in recovery — who argue that traditional kratom has helped them stay off prescription opioids and heroin. The 1,000 ppm threshold was chosen as a point below which most leaf-based products fall and above which the synthetic and semi-synthetic concentrates begin to dominate.
“In my discussions with various stakeholders, kratom as a leaf is a tea product that is sold at coffee and tea shops across the state. We certainly didn’t want to ban those products utilized by consumers and some products below 1,000 parts per million,” Sweeney told the House Finance Committee on Tuesday.
The concentrate market, by contrast, has exploded with products that bear almost no resemblance to traditional kratom. Liquid shots, gummies and powders sold under brand names at gas stations and convenience stores routinely test out at 30,000 to 50,000 parts per million of 7-hydroxymitragynine — a thirty-fold increase over the proposed legal ceiling and a level Sweeney and other lawmakers describe as functionally equivalent to a synthetic opioid.
“A handful of kratom isn’t going to harm you,” Sweeney said. “But when it gets concentrated into that 30,000 and 40,000 and 50,000 parts per million, those are the products that people refer to as gas station heroin.”
The CDC Numbers Driving the Push
The data behind the bill is the most striking indicator that something has shifted in the kratom market. According to a March 26 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cited during committee discussion, poison centers across the country logged 14,449 kratom exposure reports over the past 11 years. In 2025 alone, the number hit a record 3,434 calls — an increase of approximately 1,200 percent over the 258 reports recorded in 2015.
Hospitalizations track the same trajectory. The CDC found that single-substance kratom exposure hospitalizations rose from 43 in 2015 to 538 in 2025, also a 1,200 percent jump in a decade. The pattern suggests not just that more people are using kratom, but that the products entering the market have become significantly more dangerous than the leaf preparations that defined the category through the early 2010s.
The Mayo Clinic identifies a list of effects associated with kratom use that includes hallucinations, depression, trouble breathing, confusion, tremors and seizures. Those symptoms are far more pronounced in users of high-concentration extracts, which deliver a dose of 7-hydroxymitragynine that the leaf simply cannot match through normal preparation.
A Patchwork Federal Picture
Kratom occupies an unusual regulatory zone in the United States. The Drug Enforcement Administration once attempted to schedule its primary alkaloids — mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine — under the Controlled Substances Act in 2016, but withdrew the proposal after intense pushback from advocates and members of Congress. The Food and Drug Administration has issued repeated warnings about contamination, adulteration and the risk of liver injury, but has not banned the substance. That federal void has pushed states into their own approaches, with some banning kratom outright, others adopting a Kratom Consumer Protection Act framework that focuses on labeling and age limits, and others, like New Hampshire to date, leaving it almost entirely unregulated.
The New Hampshire bill is closer in spirit to the consumer protection approach than to a full ban, but its potency cap puts the state in a small group that has tried to use parts-per-million chemistry as the dividing line. Manufacturers selling synthetic 7-hydroxymitragynine concentrates in Granite State retail shops would be forced to reformulate, pull product or relocate to less restrictive states.
What Happens Next
With a positive committee recommendation in hand, the bill heads to the full House. The Senate has already passed its own kratom legislation, and any differences between the chambers will need to be resolved in a conference committee before a final version can move to Ayotte’s desk. The governor’s stated support means the politics are unusually aligned — a feature that has been notably absent in past attempts to regulate substances on the boundary between the supplement aisle and the controlled substance schedule.
For consumers, the practical effect of passage would be visible quickly. The leaf-based teas and milder powders that fall under the 1,000 ppm cap would remain on shelves. The shot-bottle products with names designed to evoke energy drinks or pre-workouts, but containing alkaloid concentrations that produce opioid-like sedation and dependence, would disappear from legal commerce in the state.
Public health officials in New Hampshire have spent more than a decade fighting the consequences of an opioid epidemic that hit the Granite State harder per capita than almost anywhere else in the country. The state recently secured nearly $30 million as part of the Purdue Pharma settlement to fund treatment and recovery, and lawmakers have been increasingly attentive to how the foundation of the state’s healthcare system handles substance-use disorder. The kratom bill is being framed by supporters as part of that same broader project — closing a gap before a known harm becomes another wave.
How Did We Get Here?
The synthetic 7-hydroxymitragynine market is, in industry terms, very young. Even five years ago, most kratom products on Granite State shelves were dried leaf, ground leaf or simple alcohol-based extracts measured in modest milligram quantities. A combination of advances in extraction chemistry and the absence of state or federal scheduling produced a class of products that can deliver doses of the most active alkaloid that are functionally indistinguishable from prescription opioid effects, without prescription requirements, without age verification in many shops, and without labeling that warns consumers what they are actually buying.
The result has been a market split: traditional kratom users defending the plant they have used for years, and a parallel consumer base of people, often younger, who have stumbled into dependence on concentrates that did not exist in their current form a few years ago. Hospital systems in New Hampshire and the broader Northeast have begun reporting kratom-related withdrawal admissions that look clinically similar to opioid withdrawal — the same constellation of symptoms that drove the Hassan-era methadone clinic expansion and the state’s earliest harm-reduction debates.
FAQ
For related coverage, see our reporting on New Hampshire To Receive $29.5 Million From Purdue Pharma And The Sackler Fam….
For related coverage, see our reporting on New Hampshire Ranks First for Child Well-Being and Worst for Youth Depression….
