Starting this week, the kratom drinks and capsules that have been sitting next to the energy drinks in some Missoula stores are not supposed to be there any more.

The Missoula City-County Health Department sent licensed retail food establishments a notice on September 25 telling them that no kratom food or drink product is approved for sale in their business. It gave them until November 2 to clear the shelves. From this week, inspectors check for it during the routine inspections those businesses already get.

What the rule actually covers

This is not a new law. It is the food code the county already enforces in every licensed food business, which requires food to be safe, unadulterated and honestly presented. The health department’s position is that kratom added to food or drink does not meet that standard, because the Food and Drug Administration treats it as an unsafe food additive and has never approved a kratom product as a drug. The notice also points to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s emergency scheduling of certain kratom compounds, and describes 7-OH — a compound concentrated in some newer products — as a highly potent, opioid-like substance.

The scope is narrower than “a kratom ban”. It applies to licensed retail food establishments: grocery stores, convenience stores, gas stations, cafés — anywhere the county licenses food service. The notice is addressed to those businesses and no others. Smoke shops and dispensaries have been reported as outside it; they are not food establishments and the county’s notice does not address them.

How many stores this touches

The county has not published a count of affected businesses. What it has said publicly, through Montana Free Press, is that staff visited 23 retail food businesses in late August and found 12 of them selling kratom products — a little over half.

Missoula is not the first county in Montana to do this. RiverStone Health, Yellowstone County’s health department, stopped the sales in licensed food establishments on January 1 and went to court in May against four businesses that kept going. Attorney General Austin Knudsen has said he expects the Legislature to take up kratom in January, telling Talkback that he does not think it is something the state can handle through rule alone.

If you run one of these businesses

Pull kratom food, drink and supplement products from sale before your next routine inspection. The health department’s notice puts the responsibility on each business to offer only approved products, and the number on the memo is 406-258-4755. The department is at 301 W. Alder St.

More on Missoula’s food businesses: what opened around town this fall. And if you are a property owner as well as a business owner, your county tax bill is in the mail.

Sources

• Missoula City-County Health Department, “Notice to Retail Food Establishments Selling Kratom,” September 25, 2026 — missoulapublichealth.org
• Montana Free Press, “Missoula County to prohibit sale of kratom in retail food businesses,” October 19, 2026
• NBC Montana, reporting on the November 2 enforcement date and the smoke-shop exemption