Is it legal in Italy? Drug law, penalties and sources

Five tables, and the criteria reach further than the names

Article 13 provides that narcotic and psychotropic substances under the supervision and control of the Ministry of Health, and medicines based on them, are grouped according to the criteria in article 14 into five tables annexed to the consolidated text. The Ministry completes and updates the tables by its own decree.

Article 14 sets the criteria, and one clause in it does most of the work. Table I is to contain opium and the materials from which natural opiates can be obtained, the narcotic analgesic alkaloids extractable from them, substances obtained by chemical transformation of those, and substances obtainable by synthesis which are traceable, by chemical structure or by effects, to the opiates already listed.

That last phrase is a generic reach written into the criteria rather than into a schedule. A substance can belong in table I because of what it resembles, either structurally or in what it does, and the same pattern repeats for the coca alkaloids and the other families.

Personal use is not a crime, and the sanctions are not fines

Article 73 is the criminal article. A person who without authorisation cultivates, produces, manufactures, extracts, refines, sells, offers, distributes, transports, procures for others or delivers a table I substance is punished by imprisonment of six to twenty years and a fine of 26,000 to 260,000 euro.

Article 75 is the other route and it is separate. A person who, in order to make personal use of them, unlawfully imports, exports, acquires, receives on any basis or otherwise holds narcotic or psychotropic substances is made subject to administrative sanctions.

The sanctions are not financial. They are suspension of the driving licence, of the professional driving certificate and of the moped certificate, or a ban on obtaining them for up to three years; suspension of the firearms licence; and suspension of the passport. The period runs from two months to a year for tables I and III, and from one to three months for tables II and IV.

So the same physical act sits in one of two entirely different systems depending on purpose, and the table decides how long the administrative sanction lasts.

What each article carries

Every substance confirmed against a primary source

86 substances have a status for Italy verified against a named statute. Each row links to the full entry, with the consequences, the prescription position and the source.

Not separately listed

Sources

• Decreto del Presidente della Repubblica 9 ottobre 1990, n. 309, artt. 13, 14, 73 and 75 Consulted 16 September 2026. Normattiva serves the articles individually; the bare act url returns a shell.
• Normattiva reproduction terms Italian legislative text on Normattiva is reproduced freely. This is the only source outside the Crown and United States families that this project has recorded as an outright grant, and the position was not re-verified in this session.

Statute text on this page is quoted from the copies linked above. Last verified September 21, 2026.