Is Opium legal in Morocco?

Legal status

Controlled as a narcotic. The dahir of 2 December 1922 on substances vénéneuses prints « Opium brut et officinal » and « Extraits d'opium », raw and officinal opium, and opium extracts, in tableau B, as annexed in 1922 in the ONSSA consolidated text read on 22 September 2026, and article 1 of that dahir as modified on 17 March 1953 provides that substances are inscribed in sections I and II of tableaux A, B and C by arrêté, an arrêté not read for this cell. Opium is named twice in the seven entry tableau B, in its raw and officinal form and again as extracts, and a third entry reaches its alkaloids. Tableau A separately prints « Teinture d'opium » and « Pavot, papaver sommiferum (capsules sèches) », so poppy capsules and laudanum sit under the toxic products regime rather than the narcotics one, which is a distinction the 1974 dahir's article 1 hook makes operative.

Consequences if caught

Capital exposure: none. No article of dahir portant loi 1-73-282 of 21 May 1974 provides death or life imprisonment. The ceiling in that dahir is article 2, five to ten years. Conduct distinction. Article 2 of dahir portant loi 1-73-282 of 21 May 1974 punishes whoever imports, produces, manufactures, transports, exports or unlawfully holds « les substances ou plantes classées comme stupéfiants » with five to ten years and a fine of 5.000 to 500.000 dirhams. Article 1 punishes contravention of the 1922 dahir or of the regulatory texts made for its application concerning tableau B substances with two to five years and a fine of 5.000 to 50.000 dirhams, where the act is not a graver offence under the following articles. Article 3 punishes facilitating another's use, whether for payment or free of charge, with two to ten years, and raises the minimum to five years where the user was a minor of twenty one or under. Article 8 punishes unlawful use of one of those substances or plants with two months to one year and a fine of 500 to 5.000 dirhams, or one of those two penalties only, and suspends prosecution where the person consents to a cure de désintoxication after medical examination on the requisition of the procureur du Roi. Article 13 lets the sentencing court ban a foreign national from the territory for five to ten years, without prejudice to administrative expulsion. Article 11 requires the court to confiscate the substances seized and the money the offence produced. This substance is printed in tableau B, so these articles reach it directly.

If prescribed or medical

The country level rule is the 1922 dahir's: substances intended for human or veterinary medicine are inscribed in section II of tableaux A, B and C by arrêté of the health administration, and each tableau carries its own dispensing chapter, with tableau B the strictest. A prescribing rule is not a criminal schedule and neither settles the other. Opium preparations are narcotics here. A traveller medicine containing opium needs a prescription and the pharmacy dispensing rules of Titre Deuxième of the 1922 dahir, whose article 44 region governs tableau B substances, apply to it.

Documentation

The chain has three links and the enumerated list sits in the middle one. Dahir portant loi 1-73-282 of 28 rebia II 1394 (21 May 1974), published at Bulletin officiel 3214 of 5 June 1974, pages 928 and 929, enumerates no substance at all. Its article 1 punishes contravention of the dahir of 12 rebia II 1341 (2 December 1922) on the importation, trade, holding and use of substances vénéneuses, or of the regulatory texts made for its application, concerning « les substances classées comme stupéfiants et inscrites au tableau B », and its articles 2, 3, 4 and 8 attach to « les substances ou plantes classées comme stupéfiants ». Classification therefore happens under the 1922 dahir. Article 1 of that dahir, as modified by the dahir of 17 March 1953, divides substances into « Tableau A: produits toxiques », « Tableau B: produits stupéfiants » and « Tableau C: produits dangereux », and provides that they are inscribed in section I and section II of each tableau by arrêté. The operative arrete was not read for this cell. The table annexed to the 1922 dahir and printed in the ONSSA consolidated text read on 22 September 2026 is the original annex as annexed in 1922; it carries no sections, so it predates the structure article 1 now describes. Dahir 1-80-140 of 17 December 1980, at Bulletin officiel 3590 of 19 August 1981, page 404, is a publication dahir: it publishes the 1971 Vienna Convention on psychotropic substances as annexed, and it creates no offence and inscribes nothing in tableau B. Its tableaux I to IV are the treaty's own schedules as printed in 1981, thirty two entries in total, and they were read complete from the page image. Placement for opium: « Opium brut et officinal » and « Extraits d'opium » in tableau B of the dahir of 2 December 1922. Search record. The word opium returns ten word boundary matches in the 1922 consolidated text across all three tableaux, and none in the 1971 Convention tableaux, which carry no opiate at all. All searching was done with word boundaries enforced and with plural tolerance, after a search for tetrahydrocannabinol returned a false zero on the gazette's own plural. The dossier for this jurisdiction was treated as A term list and its printed Entry claims were not accepted. It presents English substance names inside a French quotation frame, attributes them to the 1981 Bulletin officiel, and names substances that postdate that printing by decades. Every entry quoted in this cell was read from the rendered page image of the gazette at 150 dpi, because the text layer of the 1974 and 1981 scans carries optical character recognition damage.

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