Is Cathinone legal in Austria?

Legal status

Controlled in Austria as a Suchtgift, a narcotic in the strict statutory sense. In the Suchtgiftverordnung, Annex V.1 prints Cathinon on its own. The related cathine sits in the psychotrope regulation instead, which is why the khat plant engages two instruments at once. The line the schedule prints is the name and nothing more, so it proves placement and carries no operative words of its own; the prohibition comes from SMG §5(1), which confines every Suchtmittel to medical, dental, veterinary and scientific purposes, and the offences from SMG §27 onwards. Designation works by delegation: SMG §2(1) makes a substance a Suchtgift only where the 1961 Single Convention subjects it to restrictions on production, possession, trade, import, export, handling or use and the Federal Minister for Health has designated it as a narcotic by regulation, and the Suchtgiftverordnung is the regulation that does so through the annexes its §1 assigns. SV §1(5) extends a listing to every stereoisomer and to those positional isomers whose structural similarity gives a comparable pharmacological effect, and it is not an open analogue clause; the annexes I.1.c, I.2, II, IV.1, V.1 and V.2 carry their own salts, esters, ethers and preparations extensions, which are read where they sit and not transplanted.

Consequences if caught

Capital exposure: none. The ceiling Austria does carry here is life imprisonment, and it sits at a single point: SMG §28a(5) provides ten to twenty years or life for a person who commits the §28a(1) conduct while acting in a leading role within a connection of a larger number of people. Capital punishment was abolished and plays no part. Cathinone is an Annex V.1 narcotic, and the Supreme Court has held that harvested cathinone bearing plant material falls under the SMG restrictions without further extraction. Beneath that the ladder is ordinary. SMG §27(1) reaches one year or 360 day fines for unauthorized acquisition, possession, production, carriage, import, export, offering, transfer or procurement, and §27(2) reduces that to six months or 360 day fines where the act is exclusively for personal use. The threshold those tiers turn on is fixed by SMG §§28b and 31b on the pure active substance, so a gross mixed weight cannot be laid against it and the numeric figure changes with the compound. Separately from that, and carried forward from this site's published Austria entry rather than re-derived from the Suchtmittelgesetz in this pass, the published penalties are these. Austrian practice is depenalised and not legalised, and the published entry says so in those terms. There is no legal minimum quantity, and possession of any amount for personal use is punishable under section 27, up to six months in prison or a fine. Under Therapie statt Strafe at section 35, small quantity personal use is typically provisionally suspended from prosecution on one to two years of probation where the person accepts counselling or treatment. Consumption itself is not criminalised, but the possession that precedes it is. Above the Grenzmenge, the threshold quantity, the offence becomes dealing or trafficking under sections 28 and 28a, up to one to three years, escalating to ten to fifteen years for commercial or organised cases. Every figure in this paragraph is a penalty range or a fine and none of them is a quantity threshold. They describe the offences that this row's placement in the Austrian Suchtgift and psychotrope lists brings into play.

If prescribed or medical

Austria's traveller rule is the authorized purpose rule and there is no other. SMG §5(1) allows a Suchtmittel to be acquired, possessed, produced, processed, carried, imported, exported, offered, transferred or procured only for medical, dental, veterinary or scientific purposes and only as that Act provides, and professional licensing, medical dispensing and travel exemptions each remain subject to their own particular provisions rather than to any general allowance. Because this substance is a Suchtgift, the psychotrope non punishment route in SMG §30(3) is not available to it: that provision reaches medicines containing a psychotropic substance, and a narcotic is not one. The travel certificate fields that close Annexes 2 and 3 of the Psychotropenverordnung belong to the psychotrope system in the same way. No medicinal product for cathinone is established by the route this row records, so the limb realistically in question is the scientific one, which runs on a licence rather than on a prescription.

Documentation

Carry the dispensing pack, the prescription and a prescriber's letter naming the patient, the active substance, the dose and the treatment period, because the authorized purpose in SMG §5(1) has to be demonstrable at the moment it is questioned. Cathinone is the narcotic and cathine is the psychotrope, and the two travel under different rules. The narcotics list was read at its 18 September 2026 consolidation, whose last listed amendment is BGBl II 180/2026 published 10 July 2026, which is a dated source horizon rather than a guarantee that no later instrument exists.

Drug laws and enforcement change and vary within a country. This is not legal advice. Always confirm with Austria’s embassy or official drug authority before traveling; penalties can be severe, including imprisonment.