Is Ephedrine legal in Vietnam?

Legal status

Controlled as a tiền chất, a precursor, rather than as a narcotic substance. Ephedrine is printed in List IVB of the danh mục annexed to Nghị định 28/2026/NĐ-CP, in force 19 January 2026, and the entry reads “Ephedrine …”. Ephedrine is expressly listed as a List IVB precursor, so the narcotic-substance offences in Articles 248/250/251 are not the direct route; precursor conduct is governed by Article 253. The Criminal Code sorts a precursor under a different article from a narcotic substance, and that is what decides this row.

Consequences if caught

Capital exposure: none. Ephedrine is expressly listed as a List IVB precursor, so the narcotic-substance offences in Articles 248/250/251 are not the direct route; precursor conduct is governed by Article 253. A precursor charge is not one of the five narcotic conducts, so articles 248 to 252 of the Criminal Code do not sort this substance at all. The article that reaches a tiền chất is Điều 253, Tội tàng trữ, vận chuyển, mua bán hoặc chiếm đoạt tiền chất dùng vào việc sản xuất trái phép chất ma túy. It ordinarily begins at 50 g of solid precursor or 75 mL of liquid. Its heaviest band, khoản 4, reads Tiền chất ở thể rắn có khối lượng 1.200 gam trở lên, that is 1,200 g of solid precursor, or 1,800 mL of liquid, and the penalty printed for that band is thì bị phạt tù 20 năm hoặc tù chung thân, twenty years or life imprisonment. Article 253 prints no death penalty in any of its bands, before or after the 2025 amendment, and the change made to article 250 on 1 July 2025 did not create one. The five conducts that carry the heavier articles are producing, possessing, transporting, trading and appropriating a narcotic substance, and a precursor charge alleges none of them, so the quantity does not open a route that the article does not contain.

If prescribed or medical

The dossier this cell is written from carries no prescription column, so no medical route for Ephedrine is stated here and none was derived from anything else. What can be attached is this row's placement, which the dossier gives as List IVB and the published 2cb entry gives more finely as IVB #11. Carried forward from the published 2cb entry and not re-derived from the decree text in this pass: danh mục IV names the ministry responsible for each precursor in its own column, so control over a precursor runs through licensing rather than through a prescription. Whether Ephedrine can lawfully be prescribed in Vietnam, in what form, and what a traveller carrying it would have to show, is deferred and not answered here. This pass did not read Vietnam's pharmaceutical, import or customs rules, and a substance outside the narcotics law can still be refused at a border.

Documentation

Where the rule for Ephedrine comes from, and how far it reaches in time. Two instruments do two different jobs. The list: Luật Phòng, chống ma túy số 73/2021/QH14, Điều 2 khoản 1, provides that a chất ma túy is a substance the Government has placed in the danh mục, so the Government and not the National Assembly decides what counts, and it does so by decree. The decree in force is Nghị định 28/2026/NĐ-CP, issued and effective 19 January 2026, whose Điều 3 khoản 2 repeals Nghị định 57/2022/NĐ-CP and Nghị định 90/2024/NĐ-CP, and whose Điều 1 reads “Ban hành kèm theo Nghị định này Phụ lục các danh mục chất ma túy và tiền chất sau đây”, that is, issued with this decree is the appendix containing the following lists of narcotics and precursors. The published 2cb entry counted that appendix as four danh mục in seven parts and 694 entries, a count carried forward here and not re-made in this pass. The offence: Bộ luật Hình sự số 100/2015/QH13 as amended by Luật số 86/2025/QH15, khoản 18 Điều 1, enacted 25 June 2025 and in force 1 July 2025, which substituted the drug articles in full and is the reason this cell separates the conducts instead of saying that Vietnam has the death penalty for drugs. The consolidated Criminal Code text read for the article wording is văn bản hợp nhất số 135/VBHN-VPQH. The placement for this row. The dossier puts Ephedrine in List IVB and prints the entry as “Ephedrine …”. The published 2cb entry gives the finer locator IVB #11, with CAS 299-42-3, and that locator is carried forward from the published 2cb entry and not re-derived from the decree text in this pass. A quotation is evidence of the words printed, not of the item number, which is why the two are attributed separately here. The published 2cb entry also recorded how the decree read at that point: Ephedrine, CAS 299-42-3. That wording, with any adjacent item number or CAS number inside it, is carried forward from the published 2cb entry and not re-derived from the decree text in this pass, and it is a reading of a scanned document rather than a re-reading made here. The horizon. This cell is written as those lists stand after Nghị định 28/2026/NĐ-CP, in force 19 January 2026, and the dossier behind it records its own date checked as 17 September 2026. The power that moves the list is Điều 3 khoản 6 of the decree, which reads “Khi phát hiện chất mới chưa có trong các danh mục chất ma túy và tiền chất ban hành kèm theo Nghị định này … trình Chính phủ sửa đổi, bổ sung và công bố các danh mục đó.”, that is, when a new substance not yet in the lists is discovered, the Ministry of Public Security submits it to the Government to amend, supplement and publish the lists. What the text in hand incorporates is the 2026 appendix together with the Criminal Code as it stands after 1 July 2025, and nothing here was checked against an amendment published after 19 January 2026. This cell does not rule out a later amendment made under that power. Two limits of the source, stated because they bear on how much weight this row can take. The dossier has no search log column of its own, so on a row where nothing was found there is no way to tell a blank from a row nobody searched, and where its instrument column happens to record search terms that is a record of looking rather than a schedule entry. And the decree is a scanned signed document: the published 2cb entry records that it was rendered at 600 dots per inch and read with optical character recognition in Vietnamese, and that normalisation to NFC was needed before any Vietnamese string could be searched against the cached text, because the cache mixes composed and decomposed forms and a literal search returns a false zero. That method note is carried forward from the published 2cb entry and not re-derived from the decree text in this pass.

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