Senator Mike Lee Once Pushed DEA to Hold Off on a Kratom Ban. Now He Wants the Whole Plant Scheduled.
Sen. Mike Lee, who signed a 2016 letter asking DEA to postpone a kratom ban, joined Grassley and Collins in urging DEA and FDA to schedule 7-OH and the entire kratom plant.
Ten years ago, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) signed a letter asking the Drug Enforcement Administration to put the brakes on a kratom ban. On Wednesday, he signed one asking DEA to ban the entire plant.
Lee joined Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) in an October 7 letter to DEA Administrator Terrance Cole and Acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas. The senators want the agencies to move faster and go further on kratom and its increasingly potent offshoots.
Senate Judiciary Republicans @SenJudiciaryGOP🚨 Chairman @ChuckGrassley, @SenMikeLee and @SenatorCollins are calling on the Trump administration to protect American families from deadly kratom and semi-synthetic substances like 7-OH.Federal scheduling would keep these addictive drugs off gas station shelves and out of the hands of our nation’s children.Oct 7, 2026 · View on X
They urged DEA, working with FDA, to “consider scheduling the entire kratom plant, including all levels of 7-OH (not simply the threshold limit as stated in the Notice of Intent) and all other pharmacologically active alkaloids present in the plant.”
The letter makes three requests:
- Finalize DEA’s pending emergency order placing 7-OH, a kratom compound now sold in concentrated pills, gummies and shots, in Schedule I.
- Permanently schedule 7-OH and the semi-synthetic compounds MGM-15, MGM-16 and mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, which DEA temporarily banned earlier this year.
- Have FDA produce a permanent scheduling recommendation for the full kratom plant.
The senators flagged a gap in DEA’s current approach. Even after the 7-OH order is final, products with less than 0.05% 7-OH or under 1 milligram “will remain easily accessible to the American public.”
That order is still missing. Grassley pressed the administration last week to publish it, writing on X that “All Kratom is deadly.”
The senators also pointed to federal data. Emergency medical services recorded 3,672 suspected nonfatal overdoses involving 7-OH, mitragynine or kratom across 38 states between January 2023 and April 2026. Poison centers logged 3,434 kratom exposure reports in 2025 alone, a record and roughly 1,200% more than in 2015.
“We worry the availability of these products is providing consumers with a false sense of security because they are readily available and marketed as ‘natural,'” the senators wrote.
The letter builds on a growing push for a kratom ban. In March, 11 senators led by Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) urged FDA to consider scheduling the whole kratom leaf. They warned that scheduling only 7-OH “would leave these addictive products on the shelf and tacitly declare them safe for consumption.” With Wednesday’s letter, 14 senators have now formally called for federal action against the full plant.
The shift by Lee stands out. In 2016, when DEA moved to place kratom in Schedule I, Lee signed a letter led by then-Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) asking the agency to postpone. DEA withdrew its plan weeks later amid pressure from Congress and kratom users.
Now Lee is aligned with Grassley, whose committee has jurisdiction over federal drug law, and Collins, whose committee funds both DEA and FDA. Lee is positioned to lead Judiciary Republicans after Grassley, putting kratom’s former Senate ally at the head of the panel that writes the Controlled Substances Act.
The senators asked for a written response by October 15 and copied White House budget director Russell Vought, whose office reviews federal regulations.
In 2016, a Senate letter helped stop a kratom ban. This one carries one of the same signatures, and asks for the opposite.
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