by Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current
March 20, 2026
The psychoactive herb kratom can be legally sold in Rhode Island starting April 1, but a Portsmouth lawmaker and pharmacist wants it to be kept in a locked case behind sales counters.
Rep. Michelle McGaw, a Portsmouth Democrat, had voted against passage of the kratom law last year.
“Kratom is an addictive psychoactive substance,” McGaw said in a statement. “Particularly given how little study there has been on its effects on the body, it warrants extra security to prevent it from falling into the hands of kids.”
McGaw introduced a bill that adds only one clause to the kratom-enabling law, which set 21 as the legal purchasing age for kratom products. While the new law already specifies that kratom products should be kept behind the sales counter, her bill would require they be kept “within a locked case…only accessible to store employees until the kratom product is sold,” according to the bill text.
“If we are going to allow it to be sold in our state, we must ensure that it’s not out on display or kept where it could be easily stolen by someone who isn’t allowed to buy it,” McGaw said.
McGaw’s bill would take effect April 1, the same day kratom sales become legal.
Legislation regulating kratom sales has popped up in state legislatures everywhere in the past few years, buoyed in part by the ongoing opioid epidemic as some customers sought out the drug as a useful alternative for opioids. Kratom’s psychoactivity comes from the alkaloids it contains, some of which are active at the brain’s opioid receptors. The alkaloids mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH) comprise the bulk of kratom’s psychoactivity and are the substances most commonly named and regulated by legislation.
While kratom is not an opioid per se, it can have comparable effects of euphoria, pain relief and sedation because of its activity at the opioid receptors. A stimulant effect at certain doses further distinguishes kratom from the poppy-derived opioids, but kratom’s use as a substitute or ally in opioid cessation is well documented.
In Rhode Island, kratom bills pushed by industry proponents first emerged late in the 2024 session and secured hasty affirmations from both chambers to make it to the governor’s desk. But backed by the state health department, Gov. Dan McKee vetoed the 2024 bill. So legislators went back to the drawing board last year to retool the bill that McKee ultimately signed into law.
While proponents of the bill posed it as a consumer protection issue, taking kratom out of the gray market in which it resided and into the light of government oversight, McGaw was among a minority of lawmakers who said the drug was understudied. On the House floor last year, McGaw argued that kratom’s opioid-adjacent effects and ripeness for abuse potential made legalization premature.
<h4>A kratom battle reprise at the State House</h4>McGaw’s bill went before the House Committee on Corporations on March 12. She said new information from other states on kratom overdoses has only strengthened her concerns, and she cited state health department data which she said shows there were 10 kratom-related overdose fatalities in Rhode Island between 2020 and 2024.
But House Speaker Pro Tempore Brian Patrick Kennedy, who was lead sponsor in the House on the kratom bill last year, was quick on the defense, and challenged McGaw’s framing of the data. Rhode Island’s law asserts strict concentration limits for kratom products, including one of its naturally occurring alkaloids 7-OH, which can be found in much higher potencies in synthetic products. The Rhode Island law bans synthetic 7-OH and vapable or smokable products, but otherwise allows kratom extracts and products which meet potency limits.
Kennedy asked McGaw if her overdose data pointed to “natural-leaf” products, which he said the law allows, or synthetic products. McGaw replied she would have to follow up with the health department for that level of detail.
Joseph Wendelken, a spokesperson for the state health department, wrote in an email Friday afternoon that while McGaw’s cited figure of 10 fatalities was correct, the department did not have information on whether synthetic or natural kratom products were involved in these overdoses.
Mac Haddow, a kratom lobbyist who serves as senior fellow on public policy at the American Kratom Association, returned to the State House to go to bat for kratom.
“I think Rep. McGaw is seeking to irritate me,” Haddow said. At one point, he held up a bag of synthetic kratom products, which he said Utah and other states are responding to.
“You’ll never see these products behind lock and key in a Rhode Island store, because these are banned under your law,” Haddow said. “What you’ll find is a consumer who is stigmatized because they come to buy kratom for what they think is their health and wellbeing, and they have to then navigate into a system that requires them to get behind a lock and key.”
Rep. Tina Spears, a Charlestown Democrat, asked Haddow if there was any “harm” in the product being behind glass. Haddow argued it was all about stigma, and that Rhode Island’s behind-the-counter rule is already uncommon and already stigmatizing — something putting the product behind glass would only increase.
“I guess I might argue against that, because there’s a lot of products that we put behind the counter, just to make sure that there’s a measure of understanding of what the product is,” Spears replied.
McGaw’s bill was held for further study on March 12. The Senate’s version of the bill is led by Democratic Sen. Pam Lauria of Barrington, another legislator who has urged caution and skepticism over the drug during State House hearings. Lauria’s bill was heard on Feb. 26 and also held for further study.
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- 4:31 pmUpdated to include a comment the Rhode Island Department of Health.
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