Is Quetiapine legal in Jordan?

Also known as: seroquel

Legal status

Whether Quetiapine is currently scheduled under Law No. 23 of 2016, the Jordanian narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances law, is not established, and this cell says so rather than choosing a side. The substance-specific search is recorded as «سجل البحث الخاص بـ quetiapine: بُحثت الأسماء والمرادفات والصيغة الكيميائية ولم يُعثر على قيد مطابق في ملف 29-12-2025؛ وتعذر فحص متن ملف 16-09-2026.», an item-specific search record for Quetiapine: the names, synonyms and chemical formula were searched, no matching entry was found in the 29 December 2025 file, and the body of the 16 September 2026 file could not be examined. The terms run were Quetiapine and 11-[4-[2-(2-hydroxyethoxy)ethyl]piperazinyl]dibenzo[b,f][1,4]thiazepine. No exact entry was recovered. The distinction worth holding on this row is that the Law's term «المؤثرات العقلية», psychotropic substances, is a schedule membership test and not a pharmacological description: an antipsychotic is a psychoactive medicine in ordinary speech and becomes a psychotropic substance for this Law only by appearing in Schedules 5 to 9. The gap is procedural rather than interpretive. The Jordan Food and Drug Administration names a current schedules file dated 16 September 2026 whose body could not be retrieved, so the last fully searchable official text is the consolidation updated 29 December 2025. Absence from a schedule is not a finding of legality in Jordan, because article 14(a) reaches «... من غير المواد المنصوص عليها في الجداول المرفقة بهذا القانون بقصد أحداث التخدير أو أي إثر آخر ضار بالعقل.», substances other than those specified in the schedules attached to this Law taken with intent to cause intoxication or another harmful effect on the mind. Article 37 provides «لمجلس الوزراء بناء على تنسيب الوزير إجراء تعديل على أي من الجداول الملحقة بهذا القانون بحذف أي مادة منه أو إضافة أي مادة أخرى اليه أو تعديل النسب أو المواصفات أو الشروط الخاصة والمتعلقة بأي منها على ان يتم نشر ذلك في الجريدة الرسمية.», so the Council of Ministers may add a substance by a decision published in the Official Gazette.

Consequences if caught

Capital exposure: not established. Being an antipsychotic is not itself a schedule placement, and no quetiapine entry was matched in the last searchable list, so the placement that the penalty depends on is still open. Two branches follow. If quetiapine is genuinely unscheduled, article 14 of Law No. 23 of 2016 supplies non-capital possession, use and trafficking routes, with no weight threshold and with neither life imprisonment nor death available, and its intent element would rarely be met by a patient taking a prescribed dose. If a Council of Ministers decision under article 37 has added it to a schedule since the last searchable consolidation, articles 19 and 20 reach it in the ordinary way: article 19(b) makes life imprisonment mandatory on «تكون العقوبة الأشغال الشاقة المؤبدة» once a listed aggravator is proved, and article 20 makes death mandatory on «يعاقب بالإعدام» where the international drug gang or international criminal activity trigger is present, at any quantity. Stating one branch as the answer would be a guess, and a traveller should read the harsher one.

If prescribed or medical

Quetiapine is a prescribed antipsychotic and this row's deferral is about its narcotics-law status, not its medical standing. No prescribing consequence can be drawn from Law No. 23 of 2016 for it, because the control status that would drive it is not established, and its ordinary medicinal regulation in Jordan is a separate question that this table did not audit. A medicine can be prescription-only, or restricted to a specialist, without appearing on a Law No. 23 schedule at all. The country-level position is that Law No. 23 of 2016 fixes control status and does not fix prescribing or dispensing conditions, so a route here is unread rather than absent.

Documentation

Carry the prescription and the original dispensing packaging, keep the quantity to what the prescription covers, and keep the prescriber's details legible. A doctor's letter naming the patient, the active ingredient, the dose and the treatment period is worth carrying for a psychiatric medicine taken over a long period, because a long course is the thing most likely to exceed what a single prescription visibly covers. No carriage rule can be drawn from Law No. 23 of 2016, because the control status could not be closed, and an absent instruction is not a permission. The Jordan Food and Drug Administration can settle a specific case in writing before you fly. The search recorded above was run against the schedules consolidation updated 29 December 2025 and read on 17 September 2026.

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