Is Scopolamine (Devil's Breath) legal in Morocco?
- Legal status
- Controlled as a produit toxique and not as a narcotic. The dahir of 2 December 1922 on substances vénéneuses prints « Scopolamine et ses sels », scopolamine and its salts, in tableau A, 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. Scopolamine sits with the alkaloid poisons, alongside « Atropine et ses sels », « Hyoscyamine et ses sels » and the belladonna, jusquiame and stramoine plant entries that are its botanical sources. It is not in tableau B, so the narcotics articles of the 1974 dahir do not reach it and the toxic products regime does.
- 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, and it is the point of this row. The narcotics articles of the 1974 dahir, articles 2, 3 and 8, attach to « les substances ou plantes classées comme stupéfiants ». This substance is printed in tableau A and not in tableau B, so those articles do not reach it as a narcotic. What does reach it is article 1 of the 1974 dahir, which punishes contravention of the 1922 dahir or of the regulatory texts made for its application with two to five years and a fine of 5.000 to 50.000 dirhams, but article 1 is itself confined to substances inscribed in tableau B, so on the printed text it does not reach a tableau A substance either. The duties that do bite are the 1922 dahir's own: declaration, locked storage, labelling, the sales register and the age limit. Article 13 lets the sentencing court ban a foreign national from the territory for five to ten years, without prejudice to administrative expulsion.
- 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. Scopolamine is a tableau A poison. A transdermal motion sickness patch is a prescription medicine here and should travel with its prescription.
- 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 scopolamine: « Scopolamine et ses sels » in tableau A of the dahir of 2 December 1922. Search record. Scopolamine returns one word boundary match in the 1922 text and none in the 1971 Convention tableaux. The related plant entries were read in the same pass to confirm the entry is the alkaloid and not a preparation. 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.
- Dahir portant loi n° 1-73-282 du 28 rebia II 1394 (21 mai 1974) relatif à la répression de la toxicomanie et la prévention des toxicomanes, Bulletin officiel 3214 of 5 June 1974, pages 928 to 929, read from the page image on 22 September 2026
- https://www.sgg.gov.ma/BO/bo_fr/1974/bo_3214_fr.pdf | Dahir du 12 rebia II 1341 (2 décembre 1922) portant règlement sur l'importation, le commerce, la détention et l'usage des substances vénéneuses, article 1 as modified 17 March 1953 and the annexed tableaux A, B and C as annexed in 1922, ONSSA consolidated text, read from the page image on 22 September 2026 | placement for scopolamine: « Scopolamine et ses sels » in tableau A
Court records
We have not yet assessed whether court records are publicly available for this jurisdiction.
Other substances confirmed in Morocco
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.
Before you travel
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Non-U.S. travelers: check your own government’s travel advisory and embassy.
If you’re detained or arrested abroad
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