What is Kratom?

Purpose:

Build community readiness by equiping adults and decision-makers with the knowledge needed to take informed, timely action before harm escalates.

Awareness and education are often the first step in a community response, but how information is delivered – and to whom – matters.

When to Use This Approach:

Awareness and education are most effective when you want to:

• Identify newly emerging issues
• Raise low community awareness
• Prepare for policy discussions
• Build coalition alignment

Critical Consideration:

Youth typically do not have widespread awareness of Kratom or 7-OH products yet. Detailed information about effects, potency, cost and availability can increase curiousity and experimentation.

• DO: Prioritize adult-facing education to parents and caregivers, school staff, healthcare providers, community leaders and policy makers.Equip adults to recognize emerging risks, make informed policy decisions, have proactive conversations with youth.
• DO NOT: Engage in direct youth-focused education on Kratom products, especially content that describes effects, access points or pricing.This can unitintentionally function as promotion, rather than prevention.

Research is very clear that information-only approaches do not prevent substance use, but can increase experimentation and daily use in youth.

Information Dissemination – Physical Materials

Distribute brochures, infographics and fact sheets to:

• Coalitions
• Clinics and pharmacies
• Elected officials
• Faith Leaders
• Family Serving Organizations

Information Dissemination – Digital Outreach

• Use targeted social media campaigns to reach adult audiences
• Develop a central webpage or resource hub
• Share:
  • Local data
  • Expert Perspectives
  • Community stories and testomonials

Consider using other forms of outreach, such as:

• Email newsletters
• Short-form videos
• Podcast episodes
• More…

Host evening forums for adult community members to learn from a panel of experts from healthcare, poison control, law enforcement and prevention.

Focus on:

• Building shared understanding
• Answering questions
• Creating momentum for action

Don’t be afraid to meet directly with key leaders and influencers.  They’re normal folk just like you!

Pro-Tip: Approach one-on-one conversations with curiousity and respect.

Your goals:

• Understand their perspective
• Address concerns and miscoceptions
• Build alignment over time

Provide public comment at:

• City Council meetings
• School Board meetings
• Hospital District meetings

Request briefings with:

• Elected officials
• City/County staff
• School leadership
• Law enforcement and first responders

Keep your messaging clear, data-informed and action-oriented. Be aware of the line between education and lobbying if you are funded by tax dollars.

Remember: Education shares objective information to build understanding, while lobbying actively advocates for a specific policy or decision outcome.

Purpose:

Understand local availability, document retail practices, and build relationships that can inform future policy and community norms.

When to Use This Approach:

Retail engagement and observation checks are most effective when you want to:

• Affect local policy
• Know more about retail practices
• Build credibility with decision-makers
• Demonstate community readiness to address an important issue

Critical Consideration:

Because Kratom, its extracts and synthetics are not regulated in Washington State, there are currently no enforceable age restrictions. This means traditional “compliance checks” are not possible because there is no law or standard to enforce.

Remember: Retail engagement is not enforcement – its intelligence gathering, norm building and relationship development. Communities that understand their retail landscape are far more effective at advancing policy change.

Identify and map locations where Kratom products are sold. In most communities, this includes:

• Vape shops
• Convenience Stores
• Gas stations

You’ll want to track:

• Product types (powders, capsules, drink shots, cand) for Kratom, 7-OH and synthetics like MGM-15 and MGM-16
• Placement (behind counters vs. open access)
• Marketing tactics (like the number and size of signs on windows)

This data is critical for engaging policy makers!

You may choose to approach retailers as community partners, not adversaries. Feelings about this approach vary between communities so build a consensus with your coalition before starting. Ask retailers:

• Do you have a voluntary age restriction (such as 21+)?
• What has been your experience with these products?
• Have you observed any customer harms or concerns?

As members of your community, many retailers have insights about Kratom products and some may already be uneasy about selling these products.

Bridge to Policy:

If a majority of retailers report:

• Voluntary 21+ policies
• Concerns about youth access
• Negative customer experiences

This creates a strong foundation to propose:

• Age restriction ordinances
• Retail licensing requirements
• Zoning or density limitations

Remember: Demonstrating existing community norms makes policy adoption more feasible.

Some communities choose to use a “Reward & Reminder” approach to reinforce positive retail behavior while encouraging safer practices.

What it is:

Reward and Reminder is an evidence-based social norming prevention strategy that promotes safer retail practices by recognizing businesses that follow positive behaviors (like voluntary age restrictions) and providing respectful reminders and education to those who do not. Rather than relying on enforcement, it builds relationships, reinforces community standards, and shifts norms over time—making it an effective early step toward broader policy and environmental change.

How It Works:

• Recognize retailers who voluntarily adopt safer practice (like 21+ sales) that are verified by mystery shoppers:
  • Thank you visits
  • Window decals (“We support 21+ sales”)
  • Public recognition through coalition channels
• Remind retailers without safe practices in place about what they can do to improve youth safety:
  • Provide education about youth access and community concerns
  • Share emerging data and policy trends
  • Encourage voluntary policy adoption.

Reward and Reminder approaches build goodwill, strengthen relationships, create visible community norms, and lays the groundwork for future policy adoption.

Purpose:

Equip youth with the skills, confidence, relationships and decision-making ability to navigate risk, not just knowledge about substances. Youth education is most effective when it focuses on:

• Emotional regulation
• Decision-making
• Resistance and refusal skills
• Social competence
• Coping with stress and peer influence

Why Skills Training Matters

Adolescents don’t make decisions based on information alone. Developmentally, their behavior is shaped by:

• Emotional trust with parents and other helping adults
• Peer dynamics
•  Impulse control
• Perceived norms

Skill-based programs prevent substance use experimentation because they help youth to:

• Pause and think critically
• Resist social pressure
• Manage strong emotions
• Make choices aligned with their values and goals

When to Use This Approach:

Youth education is most effective when it is:

• Introduced early
• Delivered universally to all students, not just “high risk” groups
• Reinforced over time (not a one-time event)
• Paired with “environmental” strategies (like policy change that affects an entire school district or community)

Critical Considerations (What to Avoid)

Even when our intentions are positive, more than five decades of prevention research remind us that not all approaches protect youth – and some can unintentionally cause harm. To be effective, we must pair our commitment to youth wellness with strategies proven to work.

Avoid:

• Knowledge-only approaches can backfire:
  • Providing facts without skill building
  • “Just say no” messaging, or messaging with scary and fatal consequences.
• Product-Focused Education increases experimentation risk:
  • Asking youth to research specific substances on the internet
  • Effects, potency, pricing, street names or availability
• One-Time Assemblies or Guest speakers create behavioral contagion effects:
  • Motivational or fear-based presentations
  • Lived-experience storytelling without clinical framing and support
• Scare Tactics and fear-based messaging that reduces trust:
  • Graphic imagery or exaggerated claims
  • Messaging that lacks credibility with youth

Learn more from the Washington State Health Care Authority’s free guide, “Prevention Tools: What Works, What Doesn’t?“

Evidence-based programs are proven to work because they’ve been carefully designed and tested. Think of them like a recipe: the right ingredients, in the right order, for the right amount of time, lead to the outcome we’re aiming for. When we change the ingredients, skip steps, or only use parts of the recipe, we may still be “baking something,” but it’s not going to turn out the way we intended. In prevention, fidelity – following the recipe – is what makes the difference between implenting effective youth prevention, or unintentionally causing harm based on our best intentions.

The following programs adopted by the Monroe Community Coalition for Healthy Youth are strong examples of evidence-based approaches that, when implemented with fidelity, consistently produce positive and lifelong outcomes for youth. You can learn more about these and other evidence-based programs and apporaches from the Athena Forum’s Excellence in Prevention strategies list hosted by the Washington State Health Care Authority.

Example #1: Good Behavior Game

The Good Behavior Game is a classroom management strategy for elementary schools, not a curriculum, that teaches:

• Positive behavior
• Peer accountability
• Leadership and cooperation skills

This program creates long-term outcomes that stretch into adulthood, including reduced substance use, depression, suicidality and conduct disorder diagnoses.

Example #2: Botvin LifeSkills Training Program

LifeSkills Training is a comprehensive middle school curriculum that teaches:

• Refusal skills
• Personal self-management
• Decision making
• Social skills

This program is considered the gold-standard in prevention and reduces violence, tobacco, alcohol and other drug use.

Example #3: SPORT Prevention Plus Wellness

SPORT is a brief intervention model that can be used as prevention or as intervention after a substance use violation in school. It integrates:

• Health behavior goals
• Motivational strategies
• Personalized feedback

SPORT is recognized for its ability to reduce alcohol, marijuana and other drug use by helping students to plan their healthy lifestyle goals.

Purpose:

Reduce access, limit availability and protect youth by establishing clear, enforceable standards for selling or prohibiting Kratom products in your community. Policy change is one of the most effective prevention strategies because it:

• Impacts the entire community
• Does not rely on personal decision-making
• Creates lasting, sustainable change.

While awareness and education approaches help people to understand a problem, policy is what changes the environment to prevent substances from impacting our community.

When to Use This Approach

Policy change efforts often follows awareness and retail engagement strategies. It’s most effective when:

• Awareness has been established among adults and decision-makers
• Retail practices and community norms have been documented
• There is a growing concern about a substance or readiness for action to address it
• Coalition partners are aligned

Critical Considerations:

• Education vs. Lobbying
  • Education shares objective information to build a common understanding
  • Lobbying advocates for a specific policy outcome
  • Coalitions should understand any funding restrictions before engaging in advocacy
• Relationships Matter
  Policy change is not just about the issue your advocating for – its about trust and credibility.
  • Approach decision-makers with curiousity, not confrontation
  • Be prepared for a range of perspectives
  • Focus on shared goals like youth safety or community wellbeing
• Timing & Readiness
  • Moving too quickly can create resistance
  • Moving too slowly can allow the issue to boil over into crisis
• Preemption
  • Cities cannot regulate in any ways that conflict with state law.
  •  There are currently no state laws that regulate Kratom products, which allows room for local action
• Reasonableness Standard
  Local regulations must be reasonable, based on facts, and have clear public health and safety goals.
• Enforcement Structure
  If a city creates a licensing requirement, it must also:
  • Define who administers it, such as the city clerk or the finance department
  • Establish compliance checks or a complaint process
  • Identify penalties like fines, license suspension or license revocation

Purpose:

Encourage safer retail practices through eduction, partnership and community norms with requiring regulations. Voluntary guidlines are non-binding recommendations that retailers can choose to adopt in support of community health and youth safety.

What This Looks Like

Coalitions work with their community and partners to develop a set of recommended standards for retailers, such as:

• Not selling Kratom products to individuals under 21
• Keeping products behind the county to eliminate theft
• Avoid youth-oriented marketing or placement
• Positing signage about age expectations

These guidelines are then shared through Coalition outreach, one-on-one retailer conversations and community campaigns.

How to Implement

1. Develop Clear, Simple Guidelines
   • Keep them concise and actionable
   • Focus on youth access and safety
   • Align messaging across coalition partners
2. Pair with Retail Engagement
   • Introduce guidelines during store visits
   • Ask for feedback and perspectives
   • Invite retailers to be part of the solution
3. Reinforce through Reward & Reminder
   • Recognize retailers who adopt the guidelines
   • Provide follow-up support and encouragement
   • Publicly highlight positive examples
4. Track Adoption
   Document:
   • Which retailers participate practices are in place
   • What use this data to demonstrate community norms

Critical Considerations

Voluntary guidelines are a powerful stepping stone to protecting community health and wellness, but this approach alone is unlikely to significantly reduce access because:

• Voluntary guidelines are not enforceable
• Adoption may be inconsistent among retailers
• Some retailers may opt out entirely.

Purpose:

Establish clear enforceable standards for retailers selling Kratom products in order to reduce youth access and promote consistently safe business practices. Retail licensing creates a system where businesses must meet specific conditions in order to legally sell these products.

Washington State counties and cities have broad authority to regulate businesses in order protect public health, safety and welfare, including the ability to:

• Require a local business license
• Create additional licensing requirements for specific types of retailers
• Attach conditions to those licenses, like age restrictions and operating requirements

What This Looks Like:

Retailers selling Kratom products must obtain a license from your city, that may include conditions like:

• No sales to individuals under 21
• Product placement restrictions (such as behind the counter or a locked cabinet)
• Signage parameters or disclosures with each sale

Licensing ordinances are often considerd a middle path policy option because its less restrictive than a full ban, more enforceable than voluntary guidelines, and lays the groundwork for future regulation.

How to Implent:

1. Define the Licensing Structure
   • Determine who needs a license
   • Determine what products are covered (Kratom, extracts and synthetics)
   • Align with existing business licensing systems where possible
2. Establish Clear Conditions
   Common requirements include:
   • Age restrictions (21+)
   • Product placement (behind the counter)
   • Signage or disclosure requirements
   • Conditions that are clear, measurable, and enforceable
3. Create an Enforcement Process
   • Identify a responsible department (like licensing or code enforcement)
   • Establish an inspection or complaint process
   • Identify penalties (warnings, fines, suspension, or license revocation)
4. Engage Retailers Early
   • Communicate expectations early
   • Provide time for businesses to come into compliance
   • Offer education and support

Critical Considerations:

• Licensing requires administrative capacity to manage and enforce
• Standards must be clearly defined and applied consistently
• Without enforcement, licensing becomes symbolic rather than effective
• Implementation matters as much as policy design

Purpose:

Reduce youth exposure and limit access by controlling where and how many locations can sell Kratom products within a community.

Zoning and and density policies do not ban products outright; instead, they shape the retail environment to better protect public health by reducing clustering and visibility of Kratom products. This strategy:

• Reduces youth exposure during daily routines
• Prevents high concentrations of retailers in one area
• Balances business interests with community health goals

What This Looks Like:

Communities establish rules that:

• Limit sales to certain zoning areas (for example, commercial zones only)
• Require minimum distances between retailers (like 1,000 feet apart)
• Create buffers between schools and youth serving locations such as:
  • Schools
  • Parks
  • Community Centers

How to Implement

1. Map Your Community
   • Identify current retail locations, schools and youth-serving sites
   • Visualize clusters and proximity to youth spaces
2. Define Clear Standards
   • Buffer zones (like no sales within 1,000 feet of schools)
   • Spacing requirements between retailers
   • Limiting sales to specific zoning districts.
3. Apply to New and Existing Retailers
   • Some policies apply only to new businesses
   • Others may address existing retailers through licensing renewal requirements and amortization periods (a set time to come into compliance)
4. Coordinate with City Planning Staff
   • Planning and zoning departments play a key role in this process
   • Ensure your ordinance aligns with existing zoning codes and comprehensive plans

Critical Considerations:

• Zoning does not eleminate access – it redistributes it
• Existing retailers may be grandfathered in
• Policies must be clearly defined, consistently applied and legally defensible
• Strong mapping and documentation are essential

Purpose:

Create time and space for a community to understand and emerging issue and develop thoughtful policy, while preventing further expansion of access in the meantime. A temporary moratorium pauses certain activities, such as Kratom product sales or the expansion of more retail sites, for a defined period of time.

A temporary moratorium allows communities to:

• Slow down access to Kratom before its use accelerates
• Avoid reacting until after a crisis emerges
• Create space for data collection, community engagement, and policy development

What This Looks Like:

Your city will adopt a time-limited ordinance that:

• Pauses retail sales of Kratom products
• Prevents new business from entering the market
• Typically enacted for 3-12 months with the option to extend if necessary

How to Implement:

1. Establish a Clear Purpose
   • Identify what is being paused
   • Identify why action is needed now
   • Ground the moratorium in public health and youth access considerations
2. Define the Scope
   • Does it apply to new retailers only? Existing retailers, too?
   • Be clear about what is included (Kratom, its extracts and synthetics)
3. Set a Timeline
   • Establish a specific duration (commonly 6 months)
   • Include the ability to extend if additional time is needed
4. Use the Time Intentionally
   A moratorium is only as strong as what happens during it:
   • Conduct retail mapping and data collection
   • Engage community members and stakeholders
   • Work with city staff
   • Develop long-term policy options

Critical Considerations:

• Moratoriums are temporary by design
• They must be tied to a clear planning or policy development process
• Without follow-through, access may resume or expand

Purpose:

Eliminate access to Kratom products with a community in order to protect public health and prevent youth access. A prohibition of sales is the most comprehensive policy option because it removes these substances from the local retail environment entirely.

Removing access to Kratom products at the community level is one of the most direct ways to reduce availability, prevent harm, and set social norms that bolster youth ability to resist all substances. It’s best to use this approach when:

• Youth access may become widespread
• Retail availablity is high or growing
• Voluntary and regulatory approaches offer insufficient protection for public health and safety.

How to Implement:

1. Build a Strong Foundation
   • Document retail availability, youth access concerns, and community and stakeholder input
   • Engage healthcare providers, schools, law enforcement, and community members
2. Define the Policy Clearly
   • Specify what products are included (Kratom, extracts and synthetics)
   • Where the prohibition applies
   • Ensure definitions are clear, enforceable, and consistent with legal guidance
3. Plan for Implementation & Enforcement
   • Identify repsonsible departments (like code enforcement or licensing)
   • Create a complaint and inspection process
   • Establish penalties for violations and procedure for ongoing compliance
4. Communicate with Retailers
   • Provide clear timelines for compliance
   • Provide education about the policy
   • Provide opportunities for questions

Critical Considerations:

• Prohibition is the most restrictive option
  • It may generate strong support and strog opposition
• Communities should be prepared to:
  • Clearly articulate their strong  public health and safety rationale