Legal status in Venezuela

Per-substance legal status for Venezuela, from sourced statutes where available. Legal information, not legal advice; drug laws change, so confirm with the destination’s embassy or drug authority before you travel.

57 confirmed substances31 not individually verifiedLast updated September 21, 2026

Confirmed legal status

2-FDCK

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Likely] rather than [Certain], because the entry was read in a list edition later than the 2010 Law. It is numeral 29 that governs this row, and numeral 29 refers to the listas of the 1971 Convention with no date and no amendment wording, so the lists as that Convention's own amendment machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The qualification in numeral 12, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972, belongs to the 1961 limb and does not reach this row. A reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out and the consequences block sets out both.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all. One qualification on the date. The Law dates from 2010 and the list edition read here is later, so the placement depends on article 3 being read as referring to the Convention lists as they stand rather than as they stood in 2010. This row is governed by numeral 29, which refers to “las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971” with no date and no amendment wording of any kind, so the lists as that Convention's own machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The Act's single piece of amendment wording, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, sits in numeral 12 and is feminine singular agreeing with Convención, so it qualifies the 1961 treaty and belongs to the narcotics limb, not to this one. A search of the whole Act for enmienda, modificación and sus reformas returns nothing else bearing on the lists. [Likely], and a reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “2-fluorodeschloroketamine, 2-(2-fluorophenyl)-2-(methylamino)cyclohexan-1-one”, anchored on 2-fluorodeschloroketamine, in 1971 Green List Schedule II. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Ley Orgánica de Drogas, arts 2, 3, 34, 37, 53, 60, 62, 63, 130, 131, 139, 141, 142, 149, 150, 151, 153, 154 to 158 and 163, and Anexo I · sherloc.unodc.org · lablabor.com.ve · Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela arts 43 and 44 · cgr.gob.ve · INCB Yellow List, 65th edition, July 2026 · INCB Green List, 36th edition, 2025 · asambleanacional.gob.ve · Updated September 21, 2026

2-FDCK in Venezuela, full detail →

25I-NBOMe

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Likely] rather than [Certain], because the entry was read in a list edition later than the 2010 Law. It is numeral 29 that governs this row, and numeral 29 refers to the listas of the 1971 Convention with no date and no amendment wording, so the lists as that Convention's own amendment machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The qualification in numeral 12, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972, belongs to the 1961 limb and does not reach this row. A reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out and the consequences block sets out both.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all. One qualification on the date. The Law dates from 2010 and the list edition read here is later, so the placement depends on article 3 being read as referring to the Convention lists as they stand rather than as they stood in 2010. This row is governed by numeral 29, which refers to “las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971” with no date and no amendment wording of any kind, so the lists as that Convention's own machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The Act's single piece of amendment wording, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, sits in numeral 12 and is feminine singular agreeing with Convención, so it qualifies the 1961 treaty and belongs to the narcotics limb, not to this one. A search of the whole Act for enmienda, modificación and sus reformas returns nothing else bearing on the lists. [Likely], and a reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “25I-NBOMe, 2-(4-iodo-2,5-dimethoxyphenyl)-N-(2-methoxybenzyl)ethanamine”, anchored on 25I-NBOMe, in 1971 Green List Schedule I. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

25I-NBOMe in Venezuela, full detail →

2C-B

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “2C-B, 4-bromo-2,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine”, anchored on 2C-B, in 1971 Green List Schedule II. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

2C-B in Venezuela, full detail →

3-MMC

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Likely] rather than [Certain], because the entry was read in a list edition later than the 2010 Law. It is numeral 29 that governs this row, and numeral 29 refers to the listas of the 1971 Convention with no date and no amendment wording, so the lists as that Convention's own amendment machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The qualification in numeral 12, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972, belongs to the 1961 limb and does not reach this row. A reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out and the consequences block sets out both.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all. One qualification on the date. The Law dates from 2010 and the list edition read here is later, so the placement depends on article 3 being read as referring to the Convention lists as they stand rather than as they stood in 2010. This row is governed by numeral 29, which refers to “las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971” with no date and no amendment wording of any kind, so the lists as that Convention's own machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The Act's single piece of amendment wording, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, sits in numeral 12 and is feminine singular agreeing with Convención, so it qualifies the 1961 treaty and belongs to the narcotics limb, not to this one. A search of the whole Act for enmienda, modificación and sus reformas returns nothing else bearing on the lists. [Likely], and a reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “3-MMC, 3-Methylmethcathinone, 1-(3-Methylphenyl)-2-(methylamino)propane-1-one”, anchored on 3-MMC, in 1971 Green List Schedule II. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

3-MMC in Venezuela, full detail →

Adderall

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “AMFETAMINE, amphetamine, (±)-α-methylphenethylamine; DEXAMFETAMINE, dexamphetamine, (+)-α-methylphenethylamine; and LEVAMFETAMINE, levamphetamine, (−)-(R)-α-methylphenethylamine”, anchored on each of the three entry names, in 1971 Green List Schedule II. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Adderall in Venezuela, full detail →

Alcohol

Legal status: Outside the criminal drug schedule. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the 1961 and 1971 Convention schedules and this substance has no entry in either, as at the INCB list editions named in the documentation. That does not rule out a later edition or a ministerial determination under article 2. [Certain] for the absence from the two editions read, which was re derived in this pass.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This row is outside the criminal drug model of the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. The Law identifies estupefacientes and sustancias psicotrópicas by reference to the 1961 and 1971 Convention schedules, and this substance has no entry in either. The Law does touch it, but only outside the offence articles: article 34 obliges makers and importers of bebidas alcohólicas, tabaco y sus mezclas to pay two per cent of their operating profit towards treatment and prevention, and article 60 requires advertising referring to the use or consumption of alcohol, tabaco y sus mezclas to be approved in advance by the communications and health ministries and by the órgano rector, on pain of a fine of 80 to 150 Unidades Tributarias. Neither is a drug offence. Alcohol is named at art 60 and bebidas alcohólicas at art 34, both outside the offence articles. The word etanol returns zero in the Law, and the only string matches for alcohol and ethanol in the two lists are fragments inside other entries' chemical names, benzyl alcohol within CATHINE and 1-piperazineethanol within ZIPEPROL. Nothing in articles 149, 150, 151 or 153 attaches to this row. Read as at the INCB Yellow List, 65th edition of July 2026, for the 1961 Convention schedules and the INCB Green List, 36th edition of 2025, for the 1971 Convention schedules. That does not rule out a later edition, and article 2 of the Law lets the health and intermediate industries ministries determine further substances, so a later listing is not ruled out either.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This row is not a medicine within that regime, which reaches only medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas. The Law's only provisions touching this row are article 34, the two per cent special contribution on makers and importers of bebidas alcohólicas, tabaco y sus mezclas, and article 60, the prior approval of advertising.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. No anchored entry was found for this row. The term list was built from the name columns of the two incorporated INCB lists and from the 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier's quotation column, matched anchored at the start of the entry name and never as a free substring, and every candidate was read before it was accepted or discarded. Read as at the INCB Yellow List, 65th edition of July 2026, for the 1961 Convention schedules and the INCB Green List, 36th edition of 2025, for the 1971 Convention schedules. That does not rule out a later edition, and article 2 of the Law lets the health and intermediate industries ministries determine further substances, so this is an unresolved row and not a proved absence. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Ley Orgánica de Drogas, arts 2, 3, 34, 37, 53, 60, 62, 63, 130, 131, 139, 141, 142, 149, 150, 151, 153, 154 to 158 and 163, and Anexo I · sherloc.unodc.org · lablabor.com.ve · Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela arts 43 and 44 · cgr.gob.ve · asambleanacional.gob.ve · Updated September 21, 2026

Alcohol in Venezuela, full detail →

Amphetamine

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “AMFETAMINE, amphetamine, (±)-α-methylphenethylamine”, anchored on AMFETAMINE, in 1971 Green List Schedule II. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Amphetamine in Venezuela, full detail →

Ayahuasca

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “DMT, 3-[2-(dimethylamino)ethyl]indole”, anchored on DMT, in 1971 Green List Schedule I. Neither ayahuasca nor banisteriopsis caapi nor psychotria viridis is an entry in either list. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Ayahuasca in Venezuela, full detail →

Barbiturates

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedules II, III and IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints them. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedules II, III and IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints them, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedules II, III and IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints them. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “secobarbital in Schedule II; amobarbital, butalbital, cyclobarbital and pentobarbital in Schedule III; and barbital, phenobarbital, allobarbital, methylphenobarbital, secbutabarbital, vinylbital and butobarbital in Schedule IV, each read as its own entry name”, anchored on each member name, in 1971 Green List Schedules II, III and IV. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Barbiturates in Venezuela, full detail →

Benzodiazepines

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention. Article 62 allows a pharmaceutical speciality whose composition includes a Schedule IV substance of that Convention to be dispensed on the practitioner's own ordinary prescription rather than the official book. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “alprazolam, clonazepam, diazepam, etizolam, lorazepam and nimetazepam, each read as its own entry name in Schedule IV”, anchored on each member name, in 1971 Green List Schedule IV. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Benzodiazepines in Venezuela, full detail →

Buprenorphine

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule III of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule III of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule III of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “BUPRENORPHINE, 2l-cyclopropyl-7-α-[(S)-1-hydroxy-1,2,2-trimethylpropyl]-6,14-endo-ethano-6,7,8,14-tetrahydrooripavine”, anchored on BUPRENORPHINE, in 1971 Green List Schedule III. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Buprenorphine in Venezuela, full detail →

Caffeine

Legal status: Outside the criminal drug schedule. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the 1961 and 1971 Convention schedules and this substance has no entry in either, as at the INCB list editions named in the documentation. That does not rule out a later edition or a ministerial determination under article 2. [Certain] for the absence from the two editions read, which was re derived in this pass.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This row is outside the criminal drug model of the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. The Law identifies estupefacientes and sustancias psicotrópicas by reference to the 1961 and 1971 Convention schedules, and this substance has no entry in either. The term was searched in the statute text and returned nothing; separate food, licensing and ordinary product law may apply. Caffeine is the only one of these four named nowhere at all: cafeína and cafeina both return zero in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas, and caffeine returns zero in each incorporated list. There is no provision to put in place of the offence articles, unlike alcohol and tobacco which arts 34 and 60 reach. Nothing in articles 149, 150, 151 or 153 attaches to this row. Read as at the INCB Yellow List, 65th edition of July 2026, for the 1961 Convention schedules and the INCB Green List, 36th edition of 2025, for the 1971 Convention schedules. That does not rule out a later edition, and article 2 of the Law lets the health and intermediate industries ministries determine further substances, so a later listing is not ruled out either.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This row is not a medicine within that regime, which reaches only medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. No anchored entry was found for this row. The term list was built from the name columns of the two incorporated INCB lists and from the 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier's quotation column, matched anchored at the start of the entry name and never as a free substring, and every candidate was read before it was accepted or discarded. Read as at the INCB Yellow List, 65th edition of July 2026, for the 1961 Convention schedules and the INCB Green List, 36th edition of 2025, for the 1971 Convention schedules. That does not rule out a later edition, and article 2 of the Law lets the health and intermediate industries ministries determine further substances, so this is an unresolved row and not a proved absence. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Ley Orgánica de Drogas, arts 2, 3, 34, 37, 53, 60, 62, 63, 130, 131, 139, 141, 142, 149, 150, 151, 153, 154 to 158 and 163, and Anexo I · sherloc.unodc.org · lablabor.com.ve · Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela arts 43 and 44 · cgr.gob.ve · asambleanacional.gob.ve · Updated September 21, 2026

Caffeine in Venezuela, full detail →

Cannabis / THC

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. The statute reaches it by name as well: articles 149 and 153 print figures for marihuana and for marihuana genéticamente modificada by name. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. For marihuana article 153 sets the possession figure at up to 20 g, and at up to 5 g for genetically modified marihuana. Article 149 sets 5,000 g and 500 g for marihuana and 1,000 g and 200 g for the genetically modified form. Those figures sit in articles 153 and 149. Article 131 prints no gram amount at all; it defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and leaves the quantity to the judge on the forensic experts' report. For completeness the whole of the article 153 set is up to 2 g of cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures, up to 20 g of marihuana, up to 5 g of genetically modified marihuana and up to 1 g of poppy derivatives.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “CANNABIS, the flowering or fruiting tops of the cannabis plant, resin not extracted; and the separate entry for cannabis resin, extracts and tinctures”, anchored on the entry name, in 1961 Yellow List Schedule I. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Cannabis / THC in Venezuela, full detail →

Cathinone

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “CATHINONE, (-)-(S)-2-aminopropiophenone”, anchored on CATHINONE, in 1971 Green List Schedule I. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Cathinone in Venezuela, full detail →

Clonazepam

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention. Article 62 allows a pharmaceutical speciality whose composition includes a Schedule IV substance of that Convention to be dispensed on the practitioner's own ordinary prescription rather than the official book. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “CLONAZEPAM, 5-(o-chlorophenyl)-1,3-dihydro-7-nitro-2H-1,4-benzodiazepin-2-one”, anchored on CLONAZEPAM, in 1971 Green List Schedule IV. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Clonazepam in Venezuela, full detail →

Cocaine

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. The statute reaches it by name as well: articles 149 and 153 print figures for cocaína and for cocaine based narcotic substances by name. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. For cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures article 153 sets the possession figure at up to 2 g, and article 149 sets 1,000 g for the twelve to eighteen year band and 50 g for the eight to twelve year band. Those figures sit in articles 153 and 149. Article 131 prints no gram amount at all; it defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and leaves the quantity to the judge on the forensic experts' report. For completeness the whole of the article 153 set is up to 2 g of cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures, up to 20 g of marihuana, up to 5 g of genetically modified marihuana and up to 1 g of poppy derivatives.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “COCAINE, methyl ester of benzoylecgonine (an alkaloid found in coca leaves or prepared by synthesis)”, anchored on COCAINE, in 1961 Yellow List Schedule I. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Cocaine in Venezuela, full detail →

Codeine

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule II of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule II of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. The statute reaches it by name as well: articles 149 and 153 print figures for derivados de amapola. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. For poppy derivatives article 153 sets the possession figure at up to 1 g, and article 149 sets 60 g for the twelve to eighteen year band and 10 g for the eight to twelve year band. Whether a given semi synthetic opioid counts as a derivado de amapola for those figures is not answered in terms by the article. Those figures sit in articles 153 and 149. Article 131 prints no gram amount at all; it defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and leaves the quantity to the judge on the forensic experts' report. For completeness the whole of the article 153 set is up to 2 g of cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures, up to 20 g of marihuana, up to 5 g of genetically modified marihuana and up to 1 g of poppy derivatives.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule II of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “CODEINE, 3-methylmorphine (derivate of morphine, alkaloid of opium and of opium poppy)”, anchored on CODEINE, in 1961 Yellow List Schedule II. Discarded on reading: the term CODEINE first matched the words codeine and oripavine inside the description of a poppy-straw concentrate row; that line is not the codeine entry and was discarded on reading. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Codeine in Venezuela, full detail →

Crack Cocaine

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. The statute reaches it by name as well: article 149 names cocaína, sus mezclas o sustancias estupefacientes a base de cocaína. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. For cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures article 153 sets the possession figure at up to 2 g, and article 149 sets 1,000 g for the twelve to eighteen year band and 50 g for the eight to twelve year band. Those figures sit in articles 153 and 149. Article 131 prints no gram amount at all; it defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and leaves the quantity to the judge on the forensic experts' report. For completeness the whole of the article 153 set is up to 2 g of cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures, up to 20 g of marihuana, up to 5 g of genetically modified marihuana and up to 1 g of poppy derivatives.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “COCAINE, methyl ester of benzoylecgonine (an alkaloid found in coca leaves or prepared by synthesis)”, anchored on COCAINE, in 1961 Yellow List Schedule I. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Crack Cocaine in Venezuela, full detail →

Delta-8-THC

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “TETRAHYDROCANNABINOL, tetrahydrocannabinol, the following isomers and their stereochemical variants: delta-6a(10a)-THC, delta-6a(7)-THC, delta-7-THC, delta-8-THC, delta-10-THC, delta-9(11)-THC”, anchored on TETRAHYDROCANNABINOL, in 1971 Green List Schedule I. Delta-8-thc is one of the six isomers named inside the entry. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Delta-8-THC in Venezuela, full detail →

Diazepam

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention. Article 62 allows a pharmaceutical speciality whose composition includes a Schedule IV substance of that Convention to be dispensed on the practitioner's own ordinary prescription rather than the official book. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “DIAZEPAM, 7-chloro-1,3-dihydro-1-methyl-5-phenyl-2H-1,4-benzodiazepin-2-one”, anchored on DIAZEPAM, in 1971 Green List Schedule IV. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Diazepam in Venezuela, full detail →

DMT

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “DMT, 3-[2-(dimethylamino)ethyl]indole”, anchored on DMT, in 1971 Green List Schedule I. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

DMT in Venezuela, full detail →

DOM

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “STP, DOM, 2,5-dimethoxy-α,4-dimethylphenethylamine”, anchored on STP, in 1971 Green List Schedule I. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

DOM in Venezuela, full detail →

Ephedrine

Legal status: Controlled as a chemical, not as a drug. Efedrina is a named entry in Lista I of Anexo I to the Ley Orgánica de Drogas, which makes it a sustancia química controlada under article 3 numeral 26. It is not an estupefaciente or a sustancia psicotrópica, and its offence route runs through articles 149, 153 and 154 to 158 rather than through the drug bands alone. [Certain], read in the Law's own annex in this pass.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Efedrina is a named entry in Lista I of the Law's own Anexo I, so it is a sustancia química controlada under article 3 numeral 26 rather than an estupefaciente or a sustancia psicotrópica. Its offence route is therefore different. Article 154 punishes diverting or transferring controlled chemicals from licit to illicit use with eight to ten years. Article 155 punishes relabelling containers of Anexo I chemicals to evade control with six to eight years. Article 156 punishes operating on a revoked, suspended or expired licence with eight to twelve years. Article 157 punishes acting as an unregistered broker with six to eight years. The opening of article 149 also reaches precursors, solvents and essential chemicals diverted for the production of estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas, at fifteen to twenty five years, and article 153 covers illicit possession of sustancias químicas at one to two years. Article 150 reaches this row on its own wording: it punishes illicitly manufacturing, elaborating, refining, transforming, extracting, preparing, mixing or producing “las sustancias o químicos a que se refiere esta Ley” with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years, and the word químicos brings a controlled chemical inside it. Article 163's fourteen aggravating circumstances apply to trafficking in all its forms and to illicit manufacture and production, raising the penalty by one third to one half for its numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 and by one half in the remaining cases, which on the twenty five to thirty year limb would pass the thirty year ceiling that Constitution article 44 numeral 3 sets by providing that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 149's mitigating bands are not written for a controlled chemical. Its second paragraph drops the penalty to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity of droga does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and its third drops it to eight to twelve years where the quantity stays under 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Both are keyed to quantities of five named drug families and a sustancia química controlada is none of them, so no reduced figure is stated for this row. Directing or financing carries twenty five to thirty years under the final paragraph, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law. The consumption route of article 141 does not reach this row: it is written for a person holding estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas, the two categories article 3 defines by reference to the 1961 and 1971 Convention schedules, and a sustancia química controlada is neither. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. Efedrina is a controlled chemical under Anexo I rather than a scheduled drug, so the article 62 and 63 official book is not the route that governs it; the operator licensing and permit regime of the Law's administrative title is. A traveller carrying an ephedrine containing medicine should carry its prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “Efedrina”, anchored on Efedrina, in LOD Anexo I, Lista I. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Ephedrine in Venezuela, full detail →

Etizolam

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Likely] rather than [Certain], because the entry was read in a list edition later than the 2010 Law. It is numeral 29 that governs this row, and numeral 29 refers to the listas of the 1971 Convention with no date and no amendment wording, so the lists as that Convention's own amendment machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The qualification in numeral 12, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972, belongs to the 1961 limb and does not reach this row. A reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out and the consequences block sets out both.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all. One qualification on the date. The Law dates from 2010 and the list edition read here is later, so the placement depends on article 3 being read as referring to the Convention lists as they stand rather than as they stood in 2010. This row is governed by numeral 29, which refers to “las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971” with no date and no amendment wording of any kind, so the lists as that Convention's own machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The Act's single piece of amendment wording, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, sits in numeral 12 and is feminine singular agreeing with Convención, so it qualifies the 1961 treaty and belongs to the narcotics limb, not to this one. A search of the whole Act for enmienda, modificación and sus reformas returns nothing else bearing on the lists. [Likely], and a reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention. Article 62 allows a pharmaceutical speciality whose composition includes a Schedule IV substance of that Convention to be dispensed on the practitioner's own ordinary prescription rather than the official book. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “ETIZOLAM, 4-(2-Chlorophenyl)-2-ethyl-9-methyl-6H-thieno[3,2-f][1,2,4]triazolo[4,3a][1,4]diazepine”, anchored on ETIZOLAM, in 1971 Green List Schedule IV. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Etizolam in Venezuela, full detail →

Fentanyl

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “FENTANYL, 1-phenethyl-4-N-propionylanilinopiperidine”, anchored on FENTANYL, in 1961 Yellow List Schedule I. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Fentanyl in Venezuela, full detail →

GHB

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “gamma-HYDROXYBUTIRIC ACID, GHB, γ-hydroxybutyric acid”, anchored on GHB, in 1971 Green List Schedule II. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

GHB in Venezuela, full detail →

Heroin

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedules I and IV of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints them. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedules I and IV of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints them, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. The statute reaches it by name as well: articles 149 and 153 print figures for derivados de amapola. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. For poppy derivatives article 153 sets the possession figure at up to 1 g, and article 149 sets 60 g for the twelve to eighteen year band and 10 g for the eight to twelve year band. Whether a given semi synthetic opioid counts as a derivado de amapola for those figures is not answered in terms by the article. Those figures sit in articles 153 and 149. Article 131 prints no gram amount at all; it defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and leaves the quantity to the judge on the forensic experts' report. For completeness the whole of the article 153 set is up to 2 g of cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures, up to 20 g of marihuana, up to 5 g of genetically modified marihuana and up to 1 g of poppy derivatives.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedules I and IV of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints them. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “HEROIN, diacetylmorphine (derivative of morphine)”, anchored on HEROIN, in 1961 Yellow List Schedules I and IV. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Heroin in Venezuela, full detail →

HHC

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Likely] rather than [Certain], because the entry was read in a list edition later than the 2010 Law. It is numeral 29 that governs this row, and numeral 29 refers to the listas of the 1971 Convention with no date and no amendment wording, so the lists as that Convention's own amendment machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The qualification in numeral 12, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972, belongs to the 1961 limb and does not reach this row. A reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out and the consequences block sets out both.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all. One qualification on the date. The Law dates from 2010 and the list edition read here is later, so the placement depends on article 3 being read as referring to the Convention lists as they stand rather than as they stood in 2010. This row is governed by numeral 29, which refers to “las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971” with no date and no amendment wording of any kind, so the lists as that Convention's own machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The Act's single piece of amendment wording, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, sits in numeral 12 and is feminine singular agreeing with Convención, so it qualifies the 1961 treaty and belongs to the narcotics limb, not to this one. A search of the whole Act for enmienda, modificación and sus reformas returns nothing else bearing on the lists. [Likely], and a reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “HEXAHYDROCANNABINOL (HHC), 6,6,9-trimethyl-3-pentyl-6a,7,8,9,10,10a-hexahydrobenzo[c]chromen-1-ol”, anchored on HEXAHYDROCANNABINOL, in 1971 Green List Schedule II. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

HHC in Venezuela, full detail →

Hydrocodone

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. For poppy derivatives article 153 sets the possession figure at up to 1 g, and article 149 sets 60 g for the twelve to eighteen year band and 10 g for the eight to twelve year band. Whether a given semi synthetic opioid counts as a derivado de amapola for those figures is not answered in terms by the article. Those figures sit in articles 153 and 149. Article 131 prints no gram amount at all; it defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and leaves the quantity to the judge on the forensic experts' report. For completeness the whole of the article 153 set is up to 2 g of cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures, up to 20 g of marihuana, up to 5 g of genetically modified marihuana and up to 1 g of poppy derivatives.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “HYDROCODONE, dihydrocodeinone (derivative of morphine)”, anchored on HYDROCODONE, in 1961 Yellow List Schedule I. Discarded on reading: the term DIHYDROCODEINONE first matched the chemical description of CODOXIME, dihydrocodeinone-6-carboxymethyloxime; that is a different entry and was discarded on reading. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Hydrocodone in Venezuela, full detail →

Khat

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedules I and III of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints them. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedules I and III of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints them, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedules I and III of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints them. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “CATHINONE, (-)-(S)-2-aminopropiophenone (Schedule I); CATHINE, (+)-norpseudoephedrine (Schedule III)”, anchored on CATHINONE, CATHINE, in 1971 Green List Schedules I and III. Catha edulis, the plant, is not an entry in either list. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Khat in Venezuela, full detail →

Lorazepam

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention. Article 62 allows a pharmaceutical speciality whose composition includes a Schedule IV substance of that Convention to be dispensed on the practitioner's own ordinary prescription rather than the official book. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “LORAZEPAM, 7-chloro-5-(o-chlorophenyl)-1,3-dihydro-3-hydroxy-2H-1,4-benzodiazepin-2-one”, anchored on LORAZEPAM, in 1971 Green List Schedule IV. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Lorazepam in Venezuela, full detail →

LSD

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “(+)-LYSERGIDE, LSD, LSD-25, 9,10-didehydro-N,N-diethyl-6-methylergoline-8β-carboxamide”, anchored on (+)-LYSERGIDE, in 1971 Green List Schedule I. Discarded on reading: LOD Anexo I Lista I carries Acido Lisergico, which is lysergic acid, a controlled chemical, and is not lysergide. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

LSD in Venezuela, full detail →

MDA

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “TENAMFETAMINE, MDA, α-methyl-3,4-(methylenedioxy)phenethylamine”, anchored on TENAMFETAMINE, in 1971 Green List Schedule I. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

MDA in Venezuela, full detail →

MDMA

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “MDMA, (±)-N,α-dimethyl-3,4-(methylenedioxy)phenethylamine”, anchored on MDMA, in 1971 Green List Schedule I. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

MDMA in Venezuela, full detail →

MDPV

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Likely] rather than [Certain], because the entry was read in a list edition later than the 2010 Law. It is numeral 29 that governs this row, and numeral 29 refers to the listas of the 1971 Convention with no date and no amendment wording, so the lists as that Convention's own amendment machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The qualification in numeral 12, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972, belongs to the 1961 limb and does not reach this row. A reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out and the consequences block sets out both.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all. One qualification on the date. The Law dates from 2010 and the list edition read here is later, so the placement depends on article 3 being read as referring to the Convention lists as they stand rather than as they stood in 2010. This row is governed by numeral 29, which refers to “las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971” with no date and no amendment wording of any kind, so the lists as that Convention's own machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The Act's single piece of amendment wording, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, sits in numeral 12 and is feminine singular agreeing with Convención, so it qualifies the 1961 treaty and belongs to the narcotics limb, not to this one. A search of the whole Act for enmienda, modificación and sus reformas returns nothing else bearing on the lists. [Likely], and a reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “MDPV, 3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone, (RS)-1-(Benzo[d][1,3]dioxol-5-yl)-2-(pyrrolidin-1-yl)pentan-1-one”, anchored on MDPV, in 1971 Green List Schedule II. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

MDPV in Venezuela, full detail →

Mephedrone (4-MMC)

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Likely] rather than [Certain], because the entry was read in a list edition later than the 2010 Law. It is numeral 29 that governs this row, and numeral 29 refers to the listas of the 1971 Convention with no date and no amendment wording, so the lists as that Convention's own amendment machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The qualification in numeral 12, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972, belongs to the 1961 limb and does not reach this row. A reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out and the consequences block sets out both.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all. One qualification on the date. The Law dates from 2010 and the list edition read here is later, so the placement depends on article 3 being read as referring to the Convention lists as they stand rather than as they stood in 2010. This row is governed by numeral 29, which refers to “las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971” with no date and no amendment wording of any kind, so the lists as that Convention's own machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The Act's single piece of amendment wording, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, sits in numeral 12 and is feminine singular agreeing with Convención, so it qualifies the 1961 treaty and belongs to the narcotics limb, not to this one. A search of the whole Act for enmienda, modificación and sus reformas returns nothing else bearing on the lists. [Likely], and a reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “mephedrone, 4-methylmethcathinone, (RS)-2-methylamino-1-(4-methylphenyl)propan-1-one”, anchored on mephedrone, in 1971 Green List Schedule II. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Mephedrone (4-MMC) in Venezuela, full detail →

Mescaline

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “mescaline, 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine”, anchored on mescaline, in 1971 Green List Schedule I. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Mescaline in Venezuela, full detail →

Methadone

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “METHADONE, 6-dimethylamino-4,4-diphenyl-3-heptanone”, anchored on METHADONE, in 1961 Yellow List Schedule I. Discarded on reading: METHADONE INTERMEDIATE, 4-cyano-2-dimethylamino-4,4-diphenylbutane, is a separate entry and is not this row. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Methadone in Venezuela, full detail →

Methamphetamine

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “METAMFETAMINE, methamphetamine, (+)-(S)-N,α-dimethylphenethylamine; the separate racemate entry, (±)-N,α-dimethylphenethylamine; and LEVMETAMFETAMINE, levomethamphetamine”, anchored on the entry name, in 1971 Green List Schedule II. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Methamphetamine in Venezuela, full detail →

Methaqualone (Quaaludes)

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “METHAQUALONE, 2-methyl-3-o-tolyl-4(3H)-quinazolinone”, anchored on METHAQUALONE, in 1971 Green List Schedule II. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Methaqualone (Quaaludes) in Venezuela, full detail →

Methylone

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Likely] rather than [Certain], because the entry was read in a list edition later than the 2010 Law. It is numeral 29 that governs this row, and numeral 29 refers to the listas of the 1971 Convention with no date and no amendment wording, so the lists as that Convention's own amendment machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The qualification in numeral 12, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972, belongs to the 1961 limb and does not reach this row. A reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out and the consequences block sets out both.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all. One qualification on the date. The Law dates from 2010 and the list edition read here is later, so the placement depends on article 3 being read as referring to the Convention lists as they stand rather than as they stood in 2010. This row is governed by numeral 29, which refers to “las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971” with no date and no amendment wording of any kind, so the lists as that Convention's own machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The Act's single piece of amendment wording, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, sits in numeral 12 and is feminine singular agreeing with Convención, so it qualifies the 1961 treaty and belongs to the narcotics limb, not to this one. A search of the whole Act for enmienda, modificación and sus reformas returns nothing else bearing on the lists. [Likely], and a reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “methylone, beta-keto-MDMA, (RS)-2-methylamino-1-(3,4-methylenedioxyphenyl)propan-1-one”, anchored on methylone, in 1971 Green List Schedule II. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Methylone in Venezuela, full detail →

Methylphenidate

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “METHYLPHENIDATE, methyl α-phenyl-2-piperidine acetate”, anchored on METHYLPHENIDATE, in 1971 Green List Schedule II. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Methylphenidate in Venezuela, full detail →

Morphine

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. The statute reaches it by name as well: articles 149 and 153 print figures for derivados de amapola. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. For poppy derivatives article 153 sets the possession figure at up to 1 g, and article 149 sets 60 g for the twelve to eighteen year band and 10 g for the eight to twelve year band. Whether a given semi synthetic opioid counts as a derivado de amapola for those figures is not answered in terms by the article. Those figures sit in articles 153 and 149. Article 131 prints no gram amount at all; it defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and leaves the quantity to the judge on the forensic experts' report. For completeness the whole of the article 153 set is up to 2 g of cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures, up to 20 g of marihuana, up to 5 g of genetically modified marihuana and up to 1 g of poppy derivatives.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “MORPHINE, the principal alkaloid of opium and of opium poppy”, anchored on MORPHINE, in 1961 Yellow List Schedule I. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Morphine in Venezuela, full detail →

MXE

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Likely] rather than [Certain], because the entry was read in a list edition later than the 2010 Law. It is numeral 29 that governs this row, and numeral 29 refers to the listas of the 1971 Convention with no date and no amendment wording, so the lists as that Convention's own amendment machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The qualification in numeral 12, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972, belongs to the 1961 limb and does not reach this row. A reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out and the consequences block sets out both.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all. One qualification on the date. The Law dates from 2010 and the list edition read here is later, so the placement depends on article 3 being read as referring to the Convention lists as they stand rather than as they stood in 2010. This row is governed by numeral 29, which refers to “las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971” with no date and no amendment wording of any kind, so the lists as that Convention's own machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The Act's single piece of amendment wording, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, sits in numeral 12 and is feminine singular agreeing with Convención, so it qualifies the 1961 treaty and belongs to the narcotics limb, not to this one. A search of the whole Act for enmienda, modificación and sus reformas returns nothing else bearing on the lists. [Likely], and a reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “methoxetamine, MXE, (RS)-2-(3-methoxyphenyl)-2-(ethylamino)-cyclohexanone”, anchored on methoxetamine, in 1971 Green List Schedule II. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

MXE in Venezuela, full detail →

Nicotine

Legal status: Outside the criminal drug schedule. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the 1961 and 1971 Convention schedules and this substance has no entry in either, as at the INCB list editions named in the documentation. That does not rule out a later edition or a ministerial determination under article 2. [Certain] for the absence from the two editions read, which was re derived in this pass.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This row is outside the criminal drug model of the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. The Law identifies estupefacientes and sustancias psicotrópicas by reference to the 1961 and 1971 Convention schedules, and this substance has no entry in either. The Law does touch it, but only outside the offence articles: article 34 obliges makers and importers of bebidas alcohólicas, tabaco y sus mezclas to pay two per cent of their operating profit towards treatment and prevention, and article 60 requires advertising referring to the use or consumption of alcohol, tabaco y sus mezclas to be approved in advance by the communications and health ministries and by the órgano rector, on pain of a fine of 80 to 150 Unidades Tributarias. Neither is a drug offence. The word nicotina returns zero in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This row is reached only as a constituent of tabaco y sus mezclas, which arts 34 and 60 name, so there is no nicotine specific rule in the Law and no nicotine entry in either incorporated list. Nothing in articles 149, 150, 151 or 153 attaches to this row. Read as at the INCB Yellow List, 65th edition of July 2026, for the 1961 Convention schedules and the INCB Green List, 36th edition of 2025, for the 1971 Convention schedules. That does not rule out a later edition, and article 2 of the Law lets the health and intermediate industries ministries determine further substances, so a later listing is not ruled out either.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This row is not a medicine within that regime, which reaches only medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas. The Law's only provisions touching this row are article 34, the two per cent special contribution on makers and importers of bebidas alcohólicas, tabaco y sus mezclas, and article 60, the prior approval of advertising.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. No anchored entry was found for this row. The term list was built from the name columns of the two incorporated INCB lists and from the 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier's quotation column, matched anchored at the start of the entry name and never as a free substring, and every candidate was read before it was accepted or discarded. Read as at the INCB Yellow List, 65th edition of July 2026, for the 1961 Convention schedules and the INCB Green List, 36th edition of 2025, for the 1971 Convention schedules. That does not rule out a later edition, and article 2 of the Law lets the health and intermediate industries ministries determine further substances, so this is an unresolved row and not a proved absence. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Ley Orgánica de Drogas, arts 2, 3, 34, 37, 53, 60, 62, 63, 130, 131, 139, 141, 142, 149, 150, 151, 153, 154 to 158 and 163, and Anexo I · sherloc.unodc.org · lablabor.com.ve · Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela arts 43 and 44 · cgr.gob.ve · asambleanacional.gob.ve · Updated September 21, 2026

Nicotine in Venezuela, full detail →

Nimetazepam

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention. Article 62 allows a pharmaceutical speciality whose composition includes a Schedule IV substance of that Convention to be dispensed on the practitioner's own ordinary prescription rather than the official book. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “NIMETAZEPAM, 1,3-dihydro-1-methyl-7-nitro-5-phenyl-2H-1,4-benzodiazepin-2-one”, anchored on NIMETAZEPAM, in 1971 Green List Schedule IV. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Nimetazepam in Venezuela, full detail →

Opium

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. The statute reaches it by name as well: articles 149 and 153 print figures for derivados de amapola. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. For poppy derivatives article 153 sets the possession figure at up to 1 g, and article 149 sets 60 g for the twelve to eighteen year band and 10 g for the eight to twelve year band. Whether a given semi synthetic opioid counts as a derivado de amapola for those figures is not answered in terms by the article. Those figures sit in articles 153 and 149. Article 131 prints no gram amount at all; it defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and leaves the quantity to the judge on the forensic experts' report. For completeness the whole of the article 153 set is up to 2 g of cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures, up to 20 g of marihuana, up to 5 g of genetically modified marihuana and up to 1 g of poppy derivatives.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “OPIUM, the coagulated juice of the opium poppy (plant species Papaver somniferum L.)”, anchored on OPIUM, in 1961 Yellow List Schedule I. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Opium in Venezuela, full detail →

Oxycodone

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. For poppy derivatives article 153 sets the possession figure at up to 1 g, and article 149 sets 60 g for the twelve to eighteen year band and 10 g for the eight to twelve year band. Whether a given semi synthetic opioid counts as a derivado de amapola for those figures is not answered in terms by the article. Those figures sit in articles 153 and 149. Article 131 prints no gram amount at all; it defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and leaves the quantity to the judge on the forensic experts' report. For completeness the whole of the article 153 set is up to 2 g of cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures, up to 20 g of marihuana, up to 5 g of genetically modified marihuana and up to 1 g of poppy derivatives.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as the INCB Yellow List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “OXYCODONE, 14-hydroxydihydrocodeinone (derivate of morphine)”, anchored on OXYCODONE, in 1961 Yellow List Schedule I. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Oxycodone in Venezuela, full detail →

PCP

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “PHENCYCLIDINE, PCP, 1-(1-phenylcyclohexyl)piperidine”, anchored on PHENCYCLIDINE, in 1971 Green List Schedule II. Discarded on reading: the bare term PCP first matched PCPY, which is ROLICYCLIDINE, 1-(1-phenylcyclohexyl)pyrrolidine, a different Schedule I entry; discarded on reading. 3-Methoxy phencyclidine is also a separate Schedule II entry and is not PCP. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

PCP in Venezuela, full detail →

Peyote

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “mescaline, 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine”, anchored on mescaline, in 1971 Green List Schedule I. Lophophora williamsii is not an entry in either list. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Peyote in Venezuela, full detail →

Pink Cocaine / Tusi

Legal status: Label row, not a scheduled molecule. Resolve the analytically proved constituent against its own row. Cocaine, MDMA and 2C-B are Convention entries incorporated by Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3; ketamine is not. [Certain] for the entries read in this pass.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This is a street label, not a scheduled molecule. Cocaine, MDMA, 2C-B and ketamine are all sold under it, and the three named first are separate entries in the Convention schedules the Law incorporates while ketamine is not an entry at all. Resolve the analytically proved constituent against its own row. There is no residual band in this Law that would catch the label as such. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all. Those are Venezuela's published penalties. They are not this row's exposure. A label is not a molecule, and whether the offence articles reach the material in hand depends on the constituent actually proved, which is exactly what the label does not say. Read as at the INCB Yellow List, 65th edition of July 2026, for the 1961 Convention schedules and the INCB Green List, 36th edition of 2025, for the 1971 Convention schedules. That does not rule out a later edition, and article 2 of the Law lets the health and intermediate industries ministries determine further substances, so a later listing is not ruled out either.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. Because this is a label and not one molecule, the route depends on the constituent actually present and was not fixed for the label as such. Carry any controlled medicine with its prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. No anchored entry was found for this row. The term list was built from the name columns of the two incorporated INCB lists and from the 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier's quotation column, matched anchored at the start of the entry name and never as a free substring, and every candidate was read before it was accepted or discarded. Read as at the INCB Yellow List, 65th edition of July 2026, for the 1961 Convention schedules and the INCB Green List, 36th edition of 2025, for the 1971 Convention schedules. That does not rule out a later edition, and article 2 of the Law lets the health and intermediate industries ministries determine further substances, so this is an unresolved row and not a proved absence. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Pink Cocaine / Tusi in Venezuela, full detail →

Poppers

Legal status: Label row, not a scheduled molecule. No alkyl nitrite is an entry in either Convention list that Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 incorporates, and none is named in the Law's Anexo I. [Certain] for the two list editions read in this pass.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This is a product label covering alkyl nitrites, not a scheduled molecule. Venezuela has no national chemical annex of drugs in which a poppers entry could sit, because its schedule is the Convention schedule. Neither incorporated list contains any alkyl nitrite: the words nitrite and nitrito return nothing in either, and none is named in the Law's Anexo I. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all. Those are Venezuela's published penalties. They are not this row's exposure. A label is not a molecule, and whether the offence articles reach the material in hand depends on the constituent actually proved, which is exactly what the label does not say. Read as at the INCB Yellow List, 65th edition of July 2026, for the 1961 Convention schedules and the INCB Green List, 36th edition of 2025, for the 1971 Convention schedules. That does not rule out a later edition, and article 2 of the Law lets the health and intermediate industries ministries determine further substances, so a later listing is not ruled out either.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. Because this is a label and not one molecule, the route depends on the constituent actually present and was not fixed for the label as such. Carry any controlled medicine with its prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. No anchored entry was found for this row. The term list was built from the name columns of the two incorporated INCB lists and from the 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier's quotation column, matched anchored at the start of the entry name and never as a free substring, and every candidate was read before it was accepted or discarded. Read as at the INCB Yellow List, 65th edition of July 2026, for the 1961 Convention schedules and the INCB Green List, 36th edition of 2025, for the 1971 Convention schedules. That does not rule out a later edition, and article 2 of the Law lets the health and intermediate industries ministries determine further substances, so this is an unresolved row and not a proved absence. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Poppers in Venezuela, full detail →

Psilocybin

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule I of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. That is not Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, so the article 62 relaxation for a Schedule IV speciality does not reach it and the official book of articles 62 and 63 is the route. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “PSILOCYBINE, 3-[2-(dimethylamino)ethyl]indol-4-yl dihydrogen phosphate; and psilocine, psilotsin, 3-[2-(dimethylamino)ethyl]indol-4-ol”, anchored on PSILOCYBINE, in 1971 Green List Schedule I. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Psilocybin in Venezuela, full detail →

Synthetic Cannabinoids (K2 / Spice)

Legal status: Label row, resolved only through named compounds. Twenty one individual synthetic cannabinoids are entries in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention and are therefore sustancias psicotrópicas under Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 numeral 29; a compound outside that set is not reached by the class word. [Certain] for the twenty one entries, read in this pass.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This is a class label, not one molecule, and it does not resolve as a class. Twenty one individual synthetic cannabinoid compounds are named entries in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention and so are sustancias psicotrópicas under article 3 numeral 29: JWH-018 and AM-2201, UR-144 and XLR-11, AB-CHMINACA and ADB-CHMINACA, AB-FUBINACA and ADB-FUBINACA, ADB-BUTINACA and AB-PINACA, 5F-ADB and 5F-AMB, 5F-APINACA and 5F-MDMB-PICA, 5F-PB-22 and 4F-MDMB-BINACA, MDMB-4en-PINACA and MDMB-CHMICA, FUB-AMB and CUMYL-4CN-BINACA, and CUMYL-PEGACLONE. A compound outside that set is not caught by the class word, because the Law has no generic or analogue definition. One qualification on the date. The Law dates from 2010 and the list edition read here is later, so the placement depends on article 3 being read as referring to the Convention lists as they stand rather than as they stood in 2010. This row is governed by numeral 29, which refers to “las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971” with no date and no amendment wording of any kind, so the lists as that Convention's own machinery leaves them is the natural reading. The Act's single piece of amendment wording, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, sits in numeral 12 and is feminine singular agreeing with Convención, so it qualifies the 1961 treaty and belongs to the narcotics limb, not to this one. A search of the whole Act for enmienda, modificación and sus reformas returns nothing else bearing on the lists. [Likely], and a reading frozen at the 2010 lists is not ruled out. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all. Those are Venezuela's published penalties, and they attach to a proved compound from the named set. They are not the exposure of the class word, because whether the material in hand is one of the named entries is exactly what the label does not say. Read as at the INCB Yellow List, 65th edition of July 2026, for the 1961 Convention schedules and the INCB Green List, 36th edition of 2025, for the 1971 Convention schedules. That does not rule out a later edition, and article 2 of the Law lets the health and intermediate industries ministries determine further substances, so a later listing is not ruled out either.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. Because this is a label and not one molecule, the route depends on the constituent actually present and was not fixed for the label as such. Carry any controlled medicine with its prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “JWH-018 and AM-2201, UR-144 and XLR-11, AB-CHMINACA and ADB-CHMINACA, AB-FUBINACA and ADB-FUBINACA, ADB-BUTINACA and AB-PINACA, 5F-ADB and 5F-AMB, 5F-APINACA and 5F-MDMB-PICA, 5F-PB-22 and 4F-MDMB-BINACA, MDMB-4en-PINACA and MDMB-CHMICA, FUB-AMB and CUMYL-4CN-BINACA, and CUMYL-PEGACLONE”, anchored on each named compound, in 1971 Green List Schedule II. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Synthetic Cannabinoids (K2 / Spice) in Venezuela, full detail →

Tobacco

Legal status: Outside the criminal drug schedule. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the 1961 and 1971 Convention schedules and this substance has no entry in either, as at the INCB list editions named in the documentation. That does not rule out a later edition or a ministerial determination under article 2. [Certain] for the absence from the two editions read, which was re derived in this pass.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This row is outside the criminal drug model of the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. The Law identifies estupefacientes and sustancias psicotrópicas by reference to the 1961 and 1971 Convention schedules, and this substance has no entry in either. The Law does touch it, but only outside the offence articles: article 34 obliges makers and importers of bebidas alcohólicas, tabaco y sus mezclas to pay two per cent of their operating profit towards treatment and prevention, and article 60 requires advertising referring to the use or consumption of alcohol, tabaco y sus mezclas to be approved in advance by the communications and health ministries and by the órgano rector, on pain of a fine of 80 to 150 Unidades Tributarias. Neither is a drug offence. The word tabaco is named in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas on two lines, both outside the offence articles: art 34's special contribution and art 60's prior approval of advertising. It is the substance the Law actually addresses, unlike its alkaloid, and it has no entry in either incorporated list. Nothing in articles 149, 150, 151 or 153 attaches to this row. Read as at the INCB Yellow List, 65th edition of July 2026, for the 1961 Convention schedules and the INCB Green List, 36th edition of 2025, for the 1971 Convention schedules. That does not rule out a later edition, and article 2 of the Law lets the health and intermediate industries ministries determine further substances, so a later listing is not ruled out either.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This row is not a medicine within that regime, which reaches only medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas. The Law's only provisions touching this row are article 34, the two per cent special contribution on makers and importers of bebidas alcohólicas, tabaco y sus mezclas, and article 60, the prior approval of advertising.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. No anchored entry was found for this row. The term list was built from the name columns of the two incorporated INCB lists and from the 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier's quotation column, matched anchored at the start of the entry name and never as a free substring, and every candidate was read before it was accepted or discarded. Read as at the INCB Yellow List, 65th edition of July 2026, for the 1961 Convention schedules and the INCB Green List, 36th edition of 2025, for the 1971 Convention schedules. That does not rule out a later edition, and article 2 of the Law lets the health and intermediate industries ministries determine further substances, so this is an unresolved row and not a proved absence. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Ley Orgánica de Drogas, arts 2, 3, 34, 37, 53, 60, 62, 63, 130, 131, 139, 141, 142, 149, 150, 151, 153, 154 to 158 and 163, and Anexo I · sherloc.unodc.org · lablabor.com.ve · Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela arts 43 and 44 · cgr.gob.ve · asambleanacional.gob.ve · Updated September 21, 2026

Tobacco in Venezuela, full detail →

Xanax (Alprazolam)

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention. Article 62 allows a pharmaceutical speciality whose composition includes a Schedule IV substance of that Convention to be dispensed on the practitioner's own ordinary prescription rather than the official book. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “ALPRAZOLAM, 8-chloro-1-methyl-6-phenyl-4H-s-triazolo[4,3-a][1,4]benzodiazepine”, anchored on ALPRAZOLAM, in 1971 Green List Schedule IV. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Xanax (Alprazolam) in Venezuela, full detail →

Zolpidem

Legal status: Controlled. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies estupefacientes as the substances figuring in lista I or lista II of the 1961 Single Convention, “Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and sustancias psicotrópicas as those figuring in listas I to IV of the 1971 Convention, which carries no amendment wording at all. This substance was read as a named entry in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it. The offence articles are 149, 150, 151 and 153. [Certain] for the placement, with the entry text recorded in the documentation.
Consequences if caught: Capital exposure: none. The Constitution forbids it at article 43, read here in the Contraloría General de la República text: “El derecho a la vida es inviolable. Ninguna ley podrá establecer la pena de muerte, ni autoridad alguna aplicarla.” [Certain], re derived from that text in this pass. The abolition itself is usually dated to the Decreto de Garantías of 1863. [Likely] and carried, not re derived: that decree was not read here, and the year 1863 appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. This substance is a named entry in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention, as the INCB Green List prints it, which article 3 of the Law incorporates, so the offence articles reach it. Consumption is a separate route and it is not in the offences title. Article 141 provides that a person found consuming, or who declares themselves a consumer, or who holds a quantity not above the personal dose for consumption of article 131 numeral 2, is put at the disposal of the Ministerio Público, which has toxicological tests run on urine, blood or other organic fluids and a chemical and botanical examination made of the substance seized, and then asks the control judge for the person's liberty subject to attending a specialised rehabilitation centre. Where consumption is confirmed the outcome is obligatory treatment and a social reinsertion programme. Article 130 has the judge order obligatory rehabilitation in a specialised centre and allows reinserción social, seguimiento and servicio comunitario alongside it. Article 142 has the judge also suspend the driving licence and any firearms carry licence. Article 139 separately suspends a driving licence for not less than six months for driving under the effects of these substances, with obligatory treatment. Those provisions sit in Título V, Del Consumo y el Procedimiento, not in the offences and penalties title that carries articles 149 to 153, and the route turns on the quantity being at or below the personal dose. Article 153 punishes illicit possession of estupefacientes, sustancias psicotrópicas, their mixtures, salts or pharmaceutical specialities, or controlled chemicals, for purposes other than the licit activities the Law declares or the personal consumption of article 131, with one to two years. Article 149 punishes trafficking, commerce, supply, distribution, concealment, transport by any means, storage or brokerage with fifteen to twenty five years. That falls to twelve to eighteen years where the quantity does not exceed 5,000 g of marihuana, 1,000 g of genetically modified marihuana, 1,000 g of cocaine or cocaine based narcotic substances, 60 g of poppy derivatives or 500 units of synthetic drugs, and to eight to twelve years where it exceeds the article 153 maxima but does not pass 500 g of marihuana, 200 g of genetically modified marihuana, 50 g of cocaine, 10 g of poppy derivatives or 100 units of synthetic drugs. Directing or financing those operations carries twenty five to thirty years, and thirty years is the ceiling of this Law, not the twenty five of the first paragraph. Article 150 punishes illicit manufacture, elaboration, refining, transformation, extraction, preparation, mixing or production with fifteen to twenty years, and directing or financing those operations with twenty five to thirty years; that, not article 149, is the governing article for a clandestine producer. Article 151 punishes sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing, trafficking, transporting, concealing or distributing seeds, resins and plants containing these substances with twelve to eighteen years, six to ten years where the seed or resin does not exceed 300 g or the plants do not exceed 10 units, and twenty five to thirty years for directing or financing, and where the plants are genetically modified marihuana it increases the penalty by half. Article 163 lists fourteen aggravating circumstances for trafficking in all its forms, for illicit manufacture and production and for trafficking in seeds, resins and plants, among them using children, people with disabilities, people living on the street, older adults or indigenous people, commission by public officials or by someone simulating that condition, commission in a home, an educational, cultural, sporting or religious institution, a prison, a public transport vehicle, a public office or a treatment and rehabilitation centre, and commission within 500 m of such places. For numerals 2, 7, 9, 10 and 13 the penalty rises by one third to one half, and in the remaining cases by one half. Applied to the twenty five to thirty year limb that uplift would pass thirty years, while Constitution article 44 numeral 3 provides that there shall be no perpetual or infamous sentences and that custodial penalties “no excederán de treinta años”. The Law does not say how the two are reconciled. Article 153 prints its possession figures only for cocaine and its derivatives, compounds or mixtures at up to 2 g, marihuana at up to 20 g, genetically modified marihuana at up to 5 g and poppy derivatives at up to 1 g, and article 149 prints its band figures only for those families and for units of synthetic drugs. No figure is printed for this substance. Where the offence reaches it, the amount that counts as a personal dose falls to the court: article 131 defines the personal dose by tolerance, degree of dependence, individual pattern of consumption, the psychophysical characteristics of the person and the nature of the substance, and states that the judge shall appreciate it rationally and scientifically on the report of the forensic experts, while the third paragraph of article 153 has the judge determine, using the maximum experience of experts as a reference, what may constitute a personal dose of the substance concerned for an average person. Those figures are not in article 131, which prints no gram amount at all.
If prescribed / medical: Medicines containing estupefacientes or sustancias psicotrópicas may be sold to the public only by pharmacies, and only through the talonario oficial, the official prescription book, under article 62. Article 63 requires every prescription to be written on a special numbered form of a specific colour distributed by the health ministry, legibly and by hand, carrying the prescriber's names, consulting room address, identity number and health registration number, the name of the medicine, the quantity in figures and in words without alteration, the patient's and the purchaser's identification, the prescriber's signature and date, and the prescriber's wet seal. Article 53 provides that importing or exporting these substances, pure or contained in pharmaceutical specialities, by parcel, postal package or correspondence is met with confiscation and the customs law. Article 37 makes lawful only what duly authorised persons do, limits the existence and use of these substances strictly to the quantities needed for medical treatment, the legal manufacture of medicines or scientific research, and declares any other activity, use or destination illicit. This substance's entry sits in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention. Article 62 allows a pharmaceutical speciality whose composition includes a Schedule IV substance of that Convention to be dispensed on the practitioner's own ordinary prescription rather than the official book. Carry the prescription and confirm the current position with a Venezuelan mission before travel.
Documentation: Consolidation read: Ley Orgánica de Drogas, sanctioned 18 August 2010, published in Gaceta Oficial 39.510 of 15 September 2010 and reprinted, the reprint read here being the one ordered under article 4 of the Ley de Publicaciones Oficiales to correct Gaceta Oficial 39.535 of 21 October 2010, which was carried in Gaceta Oficial 39.546 of 5 November 2010. The 39.510 scan and the reprint text were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153 and agree on every figure and range. [Certain] that the reprint text read here is the 39.546 one, resolved in this pass against the gazette itself rather than inferred from the reprint order. Gaceta Oficial number 39.546 was read: its masthead is "Numero 39.546" over "Caracas, viernes 5 de noviembre de 2010", its sumario carries the "Aviso Oficial mediante el cual se corrige por error material la Ley Organica de Drogas, sancionada el 18 de agosto de 2010". The issue is a 21 page scan with no text layer and was read through Spanish optical character recognition, so everything below the masthead was matched on recognised text and not on the image. Measured against the reprint text read here, in 24 character blocks: article 153 matches on 22 of 23, article 149 on 20 of 23 and article 134 on 15 of 24, the shortfall in each being optical recognition noise on the scanned side. [Certain as to the masthead and the sumario, which are large print and unambiguous, and therefore as to the issue number and its date and subject.] [Likely as to the per article comparison, which cannot be stronger than the optical recognition it runs on.] Control model, re derived from the statute in this pass. Article 2 applies the Law's control, vigilance and fiscalisation provisions to “el conjunto de sustancias incorporadas en las listas y anexos de los convenios y tratados suscritos y ratificados por la República”, and to further substances determined by the ministries with competence in health and in intermediate industries. Article 3 numeral 12 defines estupefacientes as “cualesquiera de las sustancias, naturales o sintéticas, que figuran en la lista I o la lista II de la Convención Única de 1961, Sobre Estupefacientes, Enmendada por el Protocolo de 1972”, and numeral 29 defines a sustancia psicotrópica as “cualquier sustancia, natural o sintética, o cualquier material natural que figure en las listas I, II, III o IV del Convenio sobre Sustancias Psicotrópicas de 1971”. The Law's own Anexo I, Lista I and Lista II, is a list of controlled chemicals and precursors, not of drugs: it runs from Ácido N-acetilantranilico and Ácido Lisérgico through Efedrina, Ergometrina, Ergotamina, Isosafrol, Piperonal, Safrol and Seudoefedrina to Permanganato de potasio and Anhídrido acético. There is therefore no Venezuelan chemical schedule of drugs to read; the schedule is the Convention schedule. Entry read for this row, recorded as the list prints it: “ZOLPIDEM, N,N,6-trimethyl-2-p-tolylimidazo[1,2-a]pyridine-3-acetamide”, anchored on ZOLPIDEM, in 1971 Green List Schedule IV. Method note. The 2026-09-20 Venezuela dossier was used only as the slug list and as a term list source. Its outcome column, its instrument column and its quotation column were not treated as evidence, and no placement in this batch rests on them; every placement is the entry read in the list the statute incorporates. Sibling name traps were checked rather than assumed: desomorphine, ethylmorphine, nicomorphine, nicocodine, norcodeine and dihydrocodeine are separate entries that anchored matching correctly did not return for the morphine or codeine rows, and brolamfetamine is a separate entry that did not return for the amphetamine row. Carried from the live cell and not re derived here: that there is no medical cannabis programme in Venezuela, that CBD and hemp are treated as illegal, and that only limited scientific research licences exist. [Likely], source is the live 2cb cell dated 2026-06-26, none of it is in the Ley Orgánica de Drogas. Correction carried into every cell of this batch: the gram figures are in article 153 and in article 149, not in article 131. The live cells attributed them to article 131, which prints no quantity at all. The ceiling of this Law is thirty years under the final paragraph of article 149, not twenty five. Routes run for the instrument in this pass. The Asamblea Nacional URL cited on every row of the 2026-09-20 dossier returned HTTP 404 and 5,734 bytes of HTML, so that register is not usable. The UNODC SHERLOC copy returned HTTP 200 and a 9.9 MB scan of the Gaceta Oficial of 15 September 2010, which was read with pdftotext. oas.org redirected every juridico path to its unavailable page. A clean digital text of the reprint was obtained from a Venezuelan law firm reproduction and the two were compared on articles 131, 149 and 153, which agree.

Zolpidem in Venezuela, full detail →

Not individually verified

31 substances are not individually verified for Venezuela

For these the governing national drug law is cited, but we have not verified that the substance specifically is scheduled under it. Treat them as unanswered, not as legal. Confirm with Venezuela’s drug authority or your embassy.

Substance	What we found
1P-LSD	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
2C-E	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
2C-I	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
2C-T-7	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
4-AcO-DMT	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
4-HO-MET	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
5-MeO-DMT (Bufo / Toad)	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
6-APB	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
7-Hydroxymitragynine (7-OH)	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
Amanita muscaria	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
Amyl Nitrite	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
Cannabinol	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
CBD	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
DXM	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
Gabapentin	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
GBL	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
Ketamine	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
Kratom	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
LSA (Morning Glory)	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
Memantine	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
Mitragynine	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
Modafinil	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
Nitrous Oxide	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
Phenibut	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
Pregabalin	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
Quetiapine	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
Salvia divinorum	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
Scopolamine (Devil's Breath)	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
THC-P	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
Tramadol	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...
Xylazine	Not confirmed. Ley Orgánica de Drogas article 3 identifies controlled drugs by reference to the Convention...

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

Before you travel

Verify current rules with the destination country’s official drug authority and your own country’s embassy before traveling. Find the destination’s U.S. embassy & official country guidance →
Non-U.S. travelers: check your own government’s travel advisory and embassy.

If you’re detained or arrested abroad

Contact your own country’s embassy or consulate in the destination immediately, not the destination’s authorities. U.S. citizens: contact the nearest U.S. embassy/consulate and the U.S. State Department at +1-202-501-4444 (from abroad). If a U.S. citizen is arrested or detained abroad →

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