What happened
On July 1, 2026, the DEA announced its intent to temporarily place 7-hydroxymitragynine into Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. The notices were published in the Federal Register on July 6, 2026, following a scientific review and recommendation from HHS and the FDA.
There are actually two separate notices, and most coverage only talks about the first one:
Notice one: Schedules 7-OH above a specified threshold. That threshold is 0.050% by weight, or 1.00 mg of 7-OH per article, whichever applies to the product form. Anything above that line becomes Schedule I.
Notice two: Schedules three related compounds with no threshold at all — mitragynine pseudoindoxyl (MP), MGM-15, and MGM-16. These are covered outright, at any concentration.
Alongside the DEA notices, the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health opened a formal public docket asking for input specifically on where that threshold should be set. That docket is the reason this page exists.
These are Notices of Intent, not final orders. No scheduling order has taken effect. The comment window is open right now, and once it closes the opportunity to influence the threshold before a decision is made goes away.
What the threshold actually means
The number is where the entire fight is. A 1 mg per article cap is low enough to cover the overwhelming majority of concentrated 7-OH products currently sold in the United States. Most tablets and shots on shelves right now are well above it.
Plain leaf kratom naturally contains 7-OH in trace amounts, typically far below 0.050%, so ordinary leaf material is not the target of this action. But the language in these notices is broad enough that there are real concerns about downstream effects on kratom products more generally, which is worth raising in a comment if it applies to you.
If you want to know exactly where your own products fall relative to the threshold, run the numbers with our Potency Calculator. Knowing your actual milligram figure makes your comment considerably more useful to the people reading it.
A temporary scheduling order under the CSA lasts up to two years, extendable by one more, while a permanent decision is weighed. It is not automatically permanent, but it is not brief either.
Timeline
What you can do
One thing, mainly: submit a comment to the federal docket before July 31. Not a signature on a petition, not a repost. A comment in your own words on the official record.
This is not symbolic. In 2016, when kratom faced a similar federal scheduling threat, over 100,000 people commented and contacted lawmakers, and the proposed action was withdrawn. Public comment on a scheduling docket is one of the few mechanisms where an ordinary person's input is genuinely part of the record.
Write your comment first
Draft it in a notes app or document before you open the portal, so you are not writing under a session timer. Two or three honest paragraphs is plenty. Length is not what makes a comment count.
Open the docket
Go to regulations.gov and find the notice titled "OASH Request for Information: Temporary Placement of 7-Hydroxymitragynine Above a Specific Threshold in Schedule I." Click Comment.
Paste it in and submit
You can paste the text directly or upload it as a PDF or Word file. Enter an email address, then choose Individual or Anonymous. Anonymous is a real option if you do not want your name on a public record. Submit.
Tell people who would want to know
Most people affected by this have no idea the window exists or that it closes this month. Send them here, or send them straight to the docket. One comment is one comment. Ten is ten.
Submit once, and put everything in that single submission. Duplicate submissions from the same person do not add weight, and form letters carry far less than a unique account. If you have several things to say, say them all in one comment.
What to actually write
The docket is specifically asking about the threshold, so a comment that speaks to the threshold is more useful than a general statement of support or opposition. The single most valuable thing you can include is the milligram amount you actually use, because that is the exact question on the table.
Things worth including, to whatever extent they are true for you:
Who you are. Where you live and what you do. You are a person, not a survey response, and the record reflects that.
What you use and why. Product category rather than brand names. Pain management, tapering off prescription opioids or alcohol, functioning at work, whatever it is.
Your actual dose. The milligram figure per serving or per day, and whether you have experienced adverse effects at that level. This is the data point the agency asked for by name.
What happens to you if this passes. Concretely. Whether you would go back to something you left, whether you would end up buying from a source you cannot verify, what the alternative looks like from where you are standing.
What you would want instead. If you think a workable threshold exists, say what number and why. Testing requirements, labeling accuracy, age restrictions, and COA verification are all arguments for regulation rather than prohibition.
Do not copy a template, and be careful with AI-generated text. Agency staff read enormous volumes of these, and identical or obviously generated comments get recognized and weighted accordingly. A short, specific, plainly written comment from an actual person beats a polished generic one every time.
A few things to avoid: overstated safety claims, medical claims about curing conditions, hostility toward the agency, and anything you cannot personally stand behind. Comments are public record. Write what is true and let it be true.
Resources
We are not affiliated with 7-HOPE Alliance or any advocacy organization, vendor, or trade group. We are linking them because they are actively organizing on this and their materials are useful. Read them with the same skepticism you would apply to anything else, including this page.
Related reading on this site
If you want the background before you write, the 7-OH guide covers what the compound is, how potency math works, and why labels are so often wrong. The MGM-15 guide and the pseudomitragynine guide both cover compounds named in the second notice, which is scheduled with no threshold whatsoever. Understanding COAs is directly relevant if you want to argue that testing and verification are a better answer than a hard cap.
This site is not a vendor and takes no money from anyone in this industry. We have written plainly about 7-OH's real risks, and none of that changes here. But a threshold set low enough to function as a ban does not make anyone safer, it moves an existing market somewhere unverified. The comment window is a legitimate mechanism and it is open. Use it.