For the second year in a row, the Rhode Island House of Representatives passed a bill that would legalize and regulate the sale and manufacture of kratom, the psychoactive drug derived from a plant native to Southeast Asia.
The bill’s sponsor, Speaker Pro Tempore Brian Patrick Kennedy of Westerly, returned to the House chamber just in time to see the legislation succeed by a 40-23 vote. Kennedy has been absent from the House floor since April 22 for medical reasons, chamber spokesperson Larry Berman confirmed in a Thursday evening email.
Kennedy’s successful bill, H5565A, would remove Rhode Island from a list of six states that ban outright the sale and manufacture of kratom. The plant contains dozens of psychoactive alkaloids — the chemicals responsible for an array of effects including stimulation, euphoria and sedation. Due to its interaction with the brain’s opioid receptors, some people who use kratom are recovering from or trying to quit opioids. The alkaloids mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine are largely responsible for kratom’s dose-dependent effects and are the substances most frequently targeted by legislation.
Most states do not regulate kratom, but some have started to adopt legislation backed by the kratom industry and advocacy groups nationwide. Fourteen state legislatures have passed kratom “consumer protection” bills as of March 2025, according to KFF Health News. Like those bills, Kennedy’s legislation — and its companion S0792 in the Senate sponsored by Sen. Hanna Gallo, a Cranston Democrat — puts in place the regulatory framework for the drug’s sale and distribution with the intent of reining in gray market sales in places like head shops and gas stations.
The measure passed last year in both the House and Senate during the waning hours of the legislative session in mid-June. But Gov. Dan McKee vetoed the legislation when it arrived on his desk a few weeks later, citing regulatory confusion and the advice of state health officials. It’s unclear if McKee will nix the bill again this year.
This year’s bill is called the Rhode Island Kratom Act, and adds a new licensing and tax mechanism in coordination with the Department of Revenue, which was absent in last year’s iteration.
“We’re looking for new sources of revenue for the state of Rhode Island,” Kennedy said on the House floor. “This actually will provide us with a new source of revenue.”
“The Kratom legislation pending in the General Assembly is different than last year’s bill, so the Governor will carefully review the final bill that reaches his desk, if and when it does,” Olivia DaRocha, a spokesperson for McKee, said via email Thursday.
Meanwhile, in the Senate, Gallo’s bill was heard in committee on April 8 but has yet to be scheduled for a committee vote.
‘Sends a conflicting message’
Among the 23 dissenting votes in the House were Republicans and progressive and moderate Democrats alike. Four representatives rose in opposition to the bill, with Rep. Michelle McGaw, a Portsmouth Democrat, reprising arguments she voiced during the bill’s floor vote last year.
“I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone in this chamber that I have concerns about kratom being available on our streets, in local convenience stores, in gas stations,” McGaw told her colleagues.
Rep. Chris Paplauskas, a Cranston Republican, said legalizing kratom could strain the state’s health care system even further — not to mention conflict with legislation the House passed in April.
“This body also recently voted in favor of harm reduction sites as a way to combat opioid addiction,” Paplauskas said. “Expanding access to kratom, a substance that acts like an opioid, undermines those efforts and sends a conflicting message.”
Rep. Marie Hopkins, a Warwick Republican, offered a cautionary blast from the past.
“For those of you in the room who are as old as me, you might remember a little drug called ma huang, which was really popular in the ’90s,” Hopkins said. “We put it in all our energy drinks. You could buy it in any gas station.”
Ma huang is another name for ephedra, which is similar to kratom in that it contains multiple psychoactive alkaloids — including ephedrine, which is synthesized for over-the-counter decongestants like Sudafed and Primatene. Ephedrine, which is considered a regulatable drug and not a supplement, remains available in pharmacies under strict controls.
But parent compound ephedra was as ubiquitous as Hopkins described, sold on its own or mixed into weight loss and energy supplements. A number of deaths, including 30 in a five-year period among otherwise healthy military personnel, led the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban ephedra in 2004.
“We don’t need a repeat of that, and passing this bill will be a repeat of that,” Hopkins said.
Kennedy defended his bill. It’s much longer compared to the previous effort, at 25 pages — a length at which industry advocates bristled during committee hearings in April, fearing Kennedy’s redux departed too far from industry goals. It also incorporates input from the Rhode Island Department of Health and the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals.
He reiterated his belief in the drug’s safety: “The FDA dose-finding study concluded kratom is safe at all dose levels, and they really put a lot of kratom into people for that to be determined.”
The dose-finding study in 2024, however, did not convince the FDA to change its stance on the drug. The agency’s website, updated in August, still reads: “There are no drug products containing kratom or its two main chemical components that are legally on the market in the U.S. FDA has not approved any prescription or over-the-counter drug products containing kratom or its two main chemical components, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine.”
Independent Rep. Jon Brien of Woonsocket pointed out a contradiction between the chamber’s decisions when it comes to drug use. He offered the example of the flavored vape ban that passed as part of last year’s budget.
“We shut down actual existing businesses in the state of Rhode Island because they were selling grape-flavored, banana-flavored, frutti-tutti-flavored vapes. But we did that because we said, ‘The children, we got to save the children.’”
Brien said he felt “terrible” about opposing Kennedy’s measure on his first day back, but he pushed forward.
“What message are we sending?” Brien asked. “We just constantly send these inconsistent messages from this room. You can’t vape tutti-frutti, but you could buy some kratom at the gas station and get out in your car and take it right away.”
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
