Is Mitragynine legal in Brunei?

Legal status

Class D controlled drug. It sits in the First Schedule to the Misuse of Drugs Act, Chapter 27 of the Laws of Brunei Darussalam, Revised Edition 2013 (B.L.R.O. 2/2013) at Part IIIA, which is headed Class D Drugs, and is named in its own right, as "Mitragynine". It is the isolated alkaloid that the Schedule names, and 7-hydroxymitragynine is not named beside it.

Consequences if caught

Mitragynine is a Class D drug, entered as "Mitragynine", so the Class D columns of the Second Schedule govern. Trafficking is defined very broadly by section 2 as "to sell, give, administer, transport, send, deliver or distribute", or to offer to do any of those, so passing a share to a friend is trafficking and not sharing. Trafficking under section 3 carries a maximum of 5 years and 3 strokes with a minimum of 1 year and 1 stroke. Possession for the purpose of trafficking under section 3A carries the same. Manufacture under section 4 carries a maximum of 10 years and 10 strokes with a minimum of 3 years and 3 strokes. Import or export under section 5 carries a maximum of 10 years and 10 strokes, and the Class D column of that row shows no minimum at all where Classes A to C each show one. Simple possession under section 6(a) and consumption under section 6(b) each carry a maximum of 5 years, a fine of 10,000 Brunei dollars or both, and the second offence minimums shown for Classes A to C are likewise absent from the Class D column. Section 29(3) doubles the punishment for a second or subsequent offence under Part II other than section 6. It is the isolated alkaloid that the Schedule names, and 7-hydroxymitragynine is not named beside it. Capital and life exposure. Death is not available. The specified drug column of the Second Schedule names only opium, morphine, diamorphine, cocaine, cannabis, cannabis resin, methylamphetamine and MDMA, and no Class D column entry anywhere in the Schedule is death. Where death does appear it is mandatory. Section 29(2) provides that the columns "show respectively the punishments to be imposed on a person convicted of the offence", and each death row gives death alone with no maximum, no minimum and no alternative. No provision of the Act confers a sentencing discretion on a capital conviction. The Act creates no sentence of life imprisonment. The phrase appears nowhere in its text, and the longest determinate term it reaches is 30 years. The Class D maximums are the lowest in the Act, reaching 10 years at their highest for manufacture and import or export. Two defects in the Act bear on this. The definition of controlled drug in section 2 reads "any substance or product which is for the time being specified in Part I, II or III of the First Schedule to this Act or anything that contains any such substance or product", which omits Part IIIA, while every offence in Part II is framed as an offence in relation to a controlled drug. And section 29(2) describes a seven column table where the Second Schedule prints eight, so no paragraph of it attaches anything to the Class D column at all. Both gaps trace to S 28/1994, which inserted Part IIIA, the Class D definition and the Class D column without making the consequential amendments. The First Schedule is headed Controlled Drugs across all of its parts and the Class D column carries real punishments, so the purposive reading is the one given here. On the direction of error: this cell presents the Second Schedule as reaching the substance, which overstates exposure if the defects described above are read literally rather than purposively. Overstatement is the safer direction for a reader deciding what to risk.

If prescribed or medical

Mitragynine is scheduled for prescribing purposes as follows. It is named in no schedule of the Misuse of Drugs Regulations, Chapter 27, Rg 1 at all. The schedules to the Regulations were last amended by S 36/1998 while the First Schedule to the Act runs to S 12/2012, so the supply and register machinery in regulations 7 to 9 and 14 to 16 is keyed to lists that never caught up with the Act. What does reach it is regulation 5(2), which authorises any medical or dental officer of Brunei Darussalam or of a visiting force, acting in the course of duty, "to manufacture, possess, prescribe, administer or supply any controlled drug", and regulation 11, which governs the form of a prescription for any controlled drug "other than a drug specified in the First Schedule" to the Regulations. What was not checked for this cell is Brunei's medicines and poisons regime, which is a separate body of law that was not fetched. Absence from the Misuse of Drugs Act is not a statement that a substance is freely available.

Documentation

There is no dispensed medicinal form of mitragynine to carry a document for, so the question is not what to bring but that possession is itself the offence under section 6(a). No licence under regulation 4 and no authority under regulation 5 is available to an ordinary traveller or patient, because regulation 5 reaches only officers, analysts and medical or dental officers acting in the course of duty. Import and export are their own offence under section 5 and carry heavier minimums than trafficking, so carrying a supply into Brunei is the graver charge, not the lesser one.

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