Are Synthetic Cannabinoids (K2 / Spice) legal in Morocco?

Legal status

Controlled only through a component, and the label itself resolves to no single answer. Synthetic cannabinoid is a class label covering hundreds of compounds and Moroccan law does not use it. The one generic clause that exists is narrower than the label. Tableau I of the 1971 Convention as printed in 1981 reaches tetrahydrocannabinols and all their isomers, which catches nothing in the JWH, AM, AB-FUBINACA or MDMB families, because an indazole carboxamide is not an isomer of a tetrahydrocannabinol. No named synthetic cannabinoid appears in any of the four instruments, and in any event a Convention schedule published by a publication dahir is not a domestic criminal schedule.

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. Which article applies depends on which substance is actually present, and that is the whole difficulty with a label row. Where a tableau B substance is present, 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 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. Where the substance present is in no tableau that was read, no narcotics article has a classified substance to attach to, and the position turns on the arrêté that was not read. 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. No synthetic cannabinoid has a prescription route here. None is a named medicine in any instrument read.

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. Law 13-21 on the licit uses of cannabis, promulgated by dahir 1-21-59 of 14 July 2021 and published at Bulletin officiel 7010 of 5 August 2021, does not decriminalise. Its article 1 opens « Nonobstant les dispositions du dahir du 12 rebia II 1341 (2 décembre 1922) », the dahir of 24 April 1954 prohibiting chanvre à kif and dahir portant loi 1-73-282, and then permits cultivation, production, transformation, manufacture, marketing, transport and export to be authorised by the Agence nationale de réglementation des activités relatives au cannabis. Article 50 reads « Sont applicables les sanctions et les mesures de sûreté prévues au dahir portant loi n° 1-73-282 » where that conduct is carried on without a valid authorisation, so the 1974 penalties are the sanction for unlicensed cannabis. Articles 6 and 17 cap tetrahydrocannabinol at a rate « fixé par voie réglementaire »; no such regulation appears in the issue, so no figure is stated here. Placement for synthetic-cannabinoids: resolved through a component and not under the label. Search record. The families were searched by stem rather than by label: JWH, AM-2201, UR-144, XLR-11, AB-FUBINACA, MDMB-CHMICA and the words synthétique and cannabinoïde all return zero word boundary matches in all four instruments. 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.