The Industry Went To Court Twice In A Week. Both Suits Make The Same Argument.

For most of the summer, the 7-hydroxymitragynine story has been told through agencies: a notice of intent, a comment docket, an order that can issue on any day. In the last two weeks it acquired a second venue. Two lawsuits — one federal, one in a Massachusetts state court — now ask judges to decide how far a measure aimed at concentrated compounds reaches into ordinary leaf material.

The plaintiffs are different. The defendants are different. The legal machinery is entirely different. But strip both complaints down and the argument underneath is the same one: that a rule written for manufactured concentrates is being applied, or could be applied, to the plant.

The Federal Suit: A Scope Question, Not A Challenge

On August 27, the American Kratom Association filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, docketed as Case No. 1:26-cv-02997. The named defendants are the Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA Administrator Terrance C. Cole, and the United States Department of Justice.

What the suit asks for is narrower than the headlines around it suggest, and the narrowness is the point. The association is not asking the court to strike down the temporary scheduling order covering mitragynine pseudoindoxyl (MGPI), MGM-15 and MGM-16 — the three compounds this publication covered when they were scheduled while the 7-OH order itself continued to wait. It seeks declaratory and injunctive relief confirming that the order reaches deliberately manufactured, concentrated compounds and does not reach traditional botanical kratom products that contain only incidental, naturally occurring or naturally formed trace amounts of MGPI.

The association has been explicit that it is not seeking protection for intentionally manufactured, concentrated, fortified or enhanced MGPI products.

The mechanism it is worried about is a testing problem rather than a chemistry problem. Mac Haddow, senior fellow on public policy for the American Kratom Association, framed it this way: “This litigation is necessary because responsible companies, laboratories, researchers, and consumers need clarity now. Without clarification, the very testing and quality-control systems that protect consumers could become the basis for enforcement risk. That is bad science, bad policy, and bad consumer protection.”

There is a documentary detail underneath that claim which is worth stating precisely, because it is the hinge of the case. According to Haddow, the Department of Justice addressed enforcement discretion for incidental trace amounts of MGPI in a news release — but that language does not appear in the temporary order itself. A news release is not an operative legal instrument. If that characterization is accurate, the assurance the trade has been relying on sits in a document that binds no one, while the text that does bind is silent. That gap, rather than any disagreement about whether concentrated MGPI should be controlled, is what the association has asked a court to close.

The Massachusetts Suit: Whether The Findings Were Made

The second case runs on entirely different rails. Four retailers of natural leaf products — Rihaan Corporation, doing business as Jay’s Smoke Shop in Salem; Bhakti LLC of North Billerica; V & K Smoke Shop LLC of Quincy; and Ambreen & S Inc. of Bellingham — brought a complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief in Suffolk County Superior Court, dated August 21 and filed in the days that followed. The defendants are the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and its commissioner, Robbie Goldstein. The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys with Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton.

This publication reported when Massachusetts scheduled all forms of kratom, whole leaf included, with no threshold. The complaint attacks that breadth procedurally rather than substantively. It contends the commissioner failed to establish the three findings the statute requires before a substance is placed in Schedule I: that it has a “high potential for abuse,” that it has “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States,” and that it lacks “accepted safety for use under medical supervision.” The plaintiffs further contend the commissioner lacked the authority to schedule kratom, did not satisfy the state’s requirements for an emergency order, and swept in all kratom products rather than the synthetic derivatives the plaintiffs say present the greater risk.

The complaint is careful about what it is not arguing. “Plaintiffs do not dispute that some kratom products raise genuine public-health concerns,” it states. “Plaintiffs’ claims concern whether the Commissioner complied with the statutes.”

A department spokesperson defended the measure, saying of the products that “These products are not FDA-approved for medical use, are sold without consistent safety standards.”

The ban took effect August 29. The plaintiffs are seeking a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction. As of the most recent reporting available to this publication, the department had not filed a response and no hearing had been scheduled.

Why The Two Cases Rhyme

Set beside each other, the suits are not really about kratom’s merits. Both concede a category of products the plaintiffs are content to see controlled. Both then argue that the instrument in front of them does not distinguish carefully enough between that category and the leaf.

The federal case makes that argument about a document’s text: the order says what it says, and the reassurance is elsewhere. The Massachusetts case makes it about a decision’s record: the statute demanded three specific findings, and the plaintiffs say they were not made. One is a question of interpretation, the other of administrative procedure. Neither requires a judge to decide whether the plant is dangerous.

That matters for how this cycle is likely to unfold. As jurisdictions have written their own rules while the federal order waits, the operative dispute has quietly shifted from whether to regulate toward whether a given regulation was drafted and adopted correctly. Those are questions courts are institutionally equipped to answer, and they can be answered without resolving the underlying scientific argument at all.

What This Report Does Not Establish

Both matters are pending and nothing here has been adjudicated. The characterizations of each complaint are the plaintiffs’ own allegations. This publication has not obtained or reviewed the filed complaints directly, and reports their contents as described in the sources listed below; the docket number, court and filing dates are stated as reported. No court has ruled on the scope of the federal order or on the validity of the Massachusetts scheduling decision, and this publication takes no position on either.

Nothing here characterizes what kratom or any of the named compounds does. Statements about abuse potential, medical use, safety or risk in this report are statutory language, the parties’ contentions, or the quoted statements of named officials, and are not adopted by this publication.