Is Ephedrine legal in Venezuela?

Legal status

Controlled as a chemical, not as a drug. Efedrina is a named entry in Lista I of Anexo I to the Ley Orgánica de Drogas, which makes it a sustancia química controlada under article 3 numeral 26. It is not an estupefaciente or a sustancia psicotrópica, and its offence route runs through articles 149, 153 and 154 to 158 rather than through the drug bands alone. [Certain], read in the Law's own annex in this pass.

Consequences if caught

Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Efedrina is a named entry in Lista I of the Law's own Anexo I, so it is a sustancia química controlada under article 3 numeral 26 rather than an estupefaciente or a sustancia psicotrópica. Its offence route is therefore different. Article 154 punishes diverting or transferring controlled chemicals from licit to illicit use with eight to ten years. Article 155 punishes relabelling containers of Anexo I chemicals to evade control with six to eight years. Article 156 punishes operating on a revoked, suspended or expired licence with eight to twelve years. Article 157 punishes acting as an unregistered broker with six to eight years. The opening of article 149 also reaches precursors, solvents and essential chemicals diverted for the production of estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas, at fifteen to twenty five years, and article 153 covers illicit possession of sustancias químicas at one to two years. Article 150 reaches this row on its own wording: it punishes illicitly manufacturing, elaborating, refining, transforming, extracting, preparing, mixing or producing “las sustancias o químicos a que se refiere esta Ley” with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years, and the word químicos brings a controlled chemical inside it. Article 163's fourteen aggravating circumstances apply to trafficking in all its forms and to illicit manufacture and production, raising the penalty by one third to one half for its numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 and by one half in the remaining cases, which on the twenty five to thirty year limb would pass the thirty year ceiling that Constitution article 44 numeral 3 sets by providing that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 149's mitigating bands are not written for a controlled chemical. Its second paragraph drops the penalty to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity of droga does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and its third drops it to eight to twelve years where the quantity stays under 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Both are keyed to quantities of five named drug families and a sustancia química controlada is none of them, so no reduced figure is stated for this row. Directing or financing carries twenty five to thirty years under the final paragraph, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law. The consumption route of article 141 does not reach this row: it is written for a person holding estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas, the two categories article 3 defines by reference to the 1961 and 1971 Convention schedules, and a sustancia química controlada is neither. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.

If prescribed or medical

Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. Efedrina is a controlled chemical under Anexo I rather than a scheduled drug, so the article 62 and 63 official book is not the route that governs it; the operator licensing and permit regime of the Law's administrative title is. A traveller carrying an ephedrine containing medicine should carry its prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.

Documentation

Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “Efedrina”, anchored on Efedrina, in LOD Anexo I, Lista I. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

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