Minnesota's Kratom Purchase Age Rose To 21 On August 1, And A Washington Council Landed On The Same Number

While the federal government spends this month deciding how much 7-hydroxymitragynine is too much, two governments on opposite sides of the country spent the past week settling a different question entirely: how old a buyer has to be. Both arrived at 21.

Chapter 63 Takes Effect

As of Saturday, August 1, it is a gross misdemeanor in Minnesota to sell kratom to anyone under 21, and a misdemeanor for anyone under 21 to possess it. The change comes from House File 3453, which the Minnesota Legislature's official records list under the title "Kratom; legal age to possess kratom established as 21 years of age or older."

The bill moved with unusually little friction. According to the Legislature's own bill-status record, HF 3453 was introduced on February 19, 2026 by Representative Jessica Hanson, joined by twelve co-authors, and referred to the Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee. The House passed it 127-5 on April 20. The Senate, where Senator Mann carried the companion, passed it 56-10 on April 23. Governor Tim Walz approved it on May 5, and it was filed with the Secretary of State the same day as Chapter 63. The effective date written into the law was August 1, 2026.

The prior threshold was 18. The Minnesota Department of Health, which maintains a public information page on kratom, describes the previous rule plainly: "In Minnesota, state law prohibits selling kratom to anyone under 18 years of age." That page now also records the change, noting that bills in both chambers "passed and were signed into law by the governor" and that "the change will take effect on August 1, 2026."

One point the state makes explicitly is worth keeping straight, because it is easy to misread an age law as a broader regulatory scheme. The Department of Health states that it "does not regulate the sale or possession of kratom products." Minnesota has raised the purchase age and attached criminal penalties to it. It has not created a registration, testing, or labeling program of the kind found in state Kratom Consumer Protection Acts.

The Case Made For It

FOX 9 in Minneapolis-St. Paul, reporting on the change on July 23, quoted Dr. Kurt DeVine, an addiction physician in St. Cloud, arguing for the restriction: "This is just such a danger. We are not just having deaths; we are having significant morbidity." The Kratom Council has not independently reviewed the clinical data behind that characterization, and reports it here as the argument advanced by a named clinician in support of the law, not as a finding of this publication.

FOX 9 also noted that earlier legislative attempts to classify kratom as a Schedule II substance requiring a prescription had failed, and could be revisited next session. That is the more consequential thing to watch in Minnesota: the age bill passed nearly unopposed, but the scheduling question it displaced has not gone away.

Moses Lake Reaches 21 By A Different Road

Two thousand miles west, the Moses Lake City Council in Washington approved its own kratom ordinance at its Tuesday meeting last week, the Columbia Basin Herald reported on July 31. Sales are now restricted to people 21 and older. The vote was unanimous.

The penalties escalate: $1,000 for a first offense, $3,000 for a second, $5,000 for a third. The Herald reported that the ordinance followed lengthy discussion across two council meetings and a public hearing that drew testimony from around the country, and that councilmembers considered a total ban on sales before deciding instead to restrict purchases by age.

Councilmember Mark Fancher framed the concern in terms of access rather than product chemistry: "I really struggle with the idea that a middle school kid can walk into any gas station and get it." Councilmembers Joel Graves and David Skaug, Police Captain Mike Williams, and City Attorney Katherine Kenison also took part in the discussion, according to the Herald.

Moses Lake's decision is a notable turn given the direction of its neighbors. This publication reported last week that Ephrata had moved to ban kratom outright, and the Herald has covered a similar ban enacted in Othello in April. Washington's Legislature considered a statewide kratom bill during its 2026 session; it did not pass, and any state framework adopted later would supersede the patchwork the cities are building now.

An Older Precedent

Neither council was first to the number. In February, the Kansas City Council voted 13-0 on an ordinance that banned synthetic kratom products and synthetic 7-OH outright while restricting sales of natural kratom to buyers 21 and older, along with limits on products that can be smoked or vaped and on products resembling candy. Mayor Quinton Lucas described the approach at the time as treating the category the way the city treats alcohol and tobacco.

Two Different Levers

What distinguishes this cluster of actions from the federal proceeding is the variable being regulated. The Drug Enforcement Administration's pending notice of intent turns on concentration — a specified threshold of 7-hydroxymitragynine, above which a product falls into Schedule I. Minnesota's Chapter 63, the Moses Lake ordinance, and the Kansas City age provision turn on the purchaser instead, and apply to natural leaf products regardless of how much of any alkaloid they contain.

The two approaches are not in conflict, and a product can be lawful under one and restricted under the other. But they answer different questions, and a retailer operating across state lines now has to satisfy both. For a category that spent a decade with almost no statutory floor in most jurisdictions, an age limit with criminal penalties attached is a meaningful change, and it is arriving faster and with wider margins than the harder scheduling fights.