Eight years ago a knee-high sassafras sapling went into the ground in the damp back corner of my yard. It sat right where the lawn meets the woods edge. No permit. No paperwork. No call to anyone. I dug a hole. I set the roots. I tamped the wet soil back over them. That sapling is a tall tree now. The sassafras legal status confuses people because the tree is legal. Only one chemical inside it is not.
The plant is legal to grow and own across the United States. You can plant it in your yard. You can let it spread. You can prune it. You can enjoy the mitten-shaped leaves with no law to worry about. What gets restricted is safrole. Safrole is the oil compound found in the bark and roots. The rule does not touch the tree standing in your garden.
Here is the part that trips up most folks. The government banned safrole and sassafras oil as food additives in 1960. Studies had linked safrole to liver problems in lab animals. So the oil can no longer be sold to flavor food or commercial root beer. This is the safrole banned food rule. It covers the extracted oil. It does not cover the wood or leaves on a living plant.
Safrole carries a second label too. It sits on the DEA List I of controlled chemicals. The reason is simple. Someone can use safrole as a starting material to make illicit drugs like MDMA. That listing watches large safrole purchases and shipments. It does not reach the sassafras tree in your backyard. It does not reach the seedling at your local plant nursery either.
So two different things happen at once, and people blur them together. The chemical is controlled. The plant is not. That split is the whole sassafras legal status in one line. Growing sassafras legally has nothing to do with the food-additive ban. It has nothing to do with the DEA list. Both of those target concentrated safrole. Your tree just pulls water from the soil and grows.
The sassafras tree is legal to plant and own everywhere in the US. Only the extracted oil and the safrole chemical inside it face restrictions.
It helps to picture the line clearly. Picking up a bottle of pure sassafras oil at scale is one thing. Planting a tree in your yard is another. The first one can draw notice from the law. The second one is just gardening. You will never need to register your tree. You will never need to ask anyone for permission. You can buy a sapling at a nursery and walk out with it like any other plant.
Plant it and enjoy it. The tree gives you bright fall color. It feeds spicebush swallowtail larvae through the summer. It carries that root-beer smell when you scratch a twig. None of that crosses any legal line. A homeowner with one tree never lands on anyone's radar. You can grow a whole row of them and stay just as clear of trouble. The roots can sit in your soil for decades with no issue at all.
It also helps to know what stays untouched by all of this. The leaves are fine to grow. The wood is fine. The bark on the living tree is fine. Dried sassafras leaf, ground into the seasoning called file powder, has even kept its place in many kitchens. The safrole worry sits with the strong oil. It does not sit with the plant in your yard. So the tree is one of the safest things in your garden to own.
Maybe your real question is about brewing the roots into tea. Maybe you want to buy sassafras root to drink. That is a separate matter from whether the tree is allowed. Check the tea FAQ and the buy-root FAQ for the safety and sourcing details. For the plant itself, you can stop worrying. Owning and growing sassafras is fully legal. That little sapling I set out years ago is proof. Nobody comes knocking when you put one in the ground.
Read the full article: Sassafras Tree: Leaves, Uses and Safety
