Is Diazepam legal in United Arab Emirates?

Also known as: valium

Legal status

Diazepam is a Schedule 8 psychotropic under Decision No. 158 of 2025, at the printed entry «ديازيبام». The dossier's finding is that unauthorised personal use remains punishable even though therapeutic prescribing is permitted, which is the two part structure worth stating: the permission and the offence coexist rather than one displacing the other, and what decides a given case is the authorisation behind the tablets and not the fact that the substance is prescribable at all. The entry names diazepam and not the class, and the other five benzodiazepines in this table are named separately in the same schedule. The row runs through Articles 11, 43 and 58, with Schedule 10 carrying the quantity bands. The placement was read on 20 September 2026.

Consequences if caught

Article 58 reaches Schedules 3, 6, 7 and 8, and diazepam is in Schedule 8, so the most familiar benzodiazepine in the table sits inside a capital trafficking article. The dossier records Article 58 as providing death or life imprisonment as alternatives for its stated trafficking or promotion trigger, so death is discretionary and not mandatory on this row, and it records that the article states no quantity. The Schedule 10 bands do not gate that route. Beneath the trafficking trigger the dossier separately records that unauthorised personal use is punishable, with Article 43 the route and its tariff unstated, so the row has a real non capital exposure as well as the capital one and neither should be reported without the other.

If prescribed or medical

The dossier records at the modafinil row that a 268 entry ministry travellers list was checked and expressly not used as a schedule. Attached to this substance: diazepam is individually named in Schedule 8, and the dossier records that therapeutic prescribing is permitted while unauthorised use is not. What it does not record is the procedure by which a traveller's own prescription becomes an Emirati authorisation, so that step is deferred here rather than assumed from the fact that prescribing exists.

Documentation

Carry the prescription and the original dispensing packaging naming diazepam, and keep the tablets in the labelled container rather than loose, because the label is what connects the medicine to the prescription. The dossier records therapeutic prescribing as permitted without recording a traveller procedure, so the permit question belongs with the health ministry before departure. Provenance: the Schedule 8 placement and the entry «ديازيبام» were read on 20 September 2026, with the capital analysis resting on Article 58 and its death or life alternative.

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