Schedule Four Medicine, Schedule One Drug

What Happened

Nine substances changed schedule, and nothing else did Every row below was read from the appendix or the gazette itself.

• 9 → 18Substances in the narcotics first schedule, before and after
• 3Schedules between etomidate’s two listings
• 9Substances in the medicines first schedule, unchanged
• 2Precursors added to the fourth schedule of both lists

Timeline

Four schedule changes in under two years The Criminal Investigation Bureau calls this pace a first in the country’s drug-control history.

1. 11 Aug 2023The Constitutional Court holds that life imprisonment as the minimum for selling a first-schedule narcotic is disproportionate in cases of extremely minor circumstance, and gives the authorities two years to amend it
2. 2 Aug 2024Etomidate becomes a fourth-schedule controlled drug, item eighty
3. 5 Aug 2024Three days later it becomes a third-schedule narcotic
4. 27 Nov 2024Reclassified again, to the second schedule
5. 11 Aug 2025The Constitutional Court’s two-year deadline falls. The Act is not amended, and has not been since
6. 27 Aug 2025Three etomidate analogues are added as second-schedule controlled drugs, and item eighty is rewritten to cover its isomers
7. 20 Nov 2025Saliva rapid-test kits enter routine police use, which is one of two reasons the referral figures below climb
8. 17 Jun 2026The justice ministry’s review committee approves the move to the first schedule
9. 25 Jun 2026The Executive Yuan announces it, and the gazette carries the amended appendices the next day
10. 27 Jun 2026It takes effect. Nine compounds join the first schedule and two precursors join the fourth. Police run a nationwide sweep the same day
11. 11 Sep 2026The fiftieth amendment to the medicines list adds the same two precursors there as fourth-schedule raw materials

The Argument

Two committees, two tests, two ministries Which is why the lists can come apart, and why nothing requires them to agree.

What Others Add

The ladder, the court, and what the lists do not match on Every figure here is read from the statute, the lists or the agency’s own count.

• The unamended provision

  A sentencing floor the court found disproportionate

  • In August 2023 the Constitutional Court held that life imprisonment as the minimum for selling a first-schedule narcotic is disproportionate where the manner, quantity and consideration make the case extremely minor
  • It gave two years to amend. The deadline passed in August 2025 and the Act’s recorded last amendment is still May 2022, so it has not been amended
  • Until it is, a court trying such a case may reduce the sentence by a further half on top of the ordinary mitigation — that interim power is still what applies
  • Our reading: nine substances were moved into a provision whose floor the court has already found constitutionally defective, and which the legislature has left as it was

• Medicines that are not drugs

  A short list on one side and not the other

  • Mifepristone (RU486), clobenzorex and thiamylal are fourth-schedule controlled drugs and appear in none of the four narcotics appendices
  • Dealing in one of those outside the rules draws an administrative penalty and the pharmaceutical law, not a narcotics charge
  • The reverse case is rarer than it is usually said to be. Heroin is a first-schedule controlled drug as well as a first-schedule narcotic — it has no medical use, and the listing is what permits scientific need
  • How many such mismatches there are in total is not settled here: the fourth schedules alone hold 81 live items on one list against 77 on the other

• What drove the move

  Drug-driving, and a caution about its figures

  • Police referrals for drug-driving ran 315 in 2023, 2,619 in 2024, 8,659 in 2025, and 6,730 in the first five months of 2026
  • Those are referrals, and two detection changes sit inside the period. A 2023 amendment clarified the test, and saliva rapid-test kits entered routine use in November 2025. The officer who gives the figures gives both reasons in the same interview
  • In 2026 referrals, methamphetamine was detected in about 75 per cent, etomidate in about 20, ketamine in about 15; the shares exceed 100 because people use more than one
  • That matters legally: mixing two or more narcotics applies the highest schedule’s penalty and raises it by up to a half

• How fast the lists move

  Quarterly now, where it used to be twice a year

  • The medicines list has been amended 50 times since December 1999, by Executive Yuan notice each time
  • One to three a year for most of that span; 3 in 2024, 4 in 2025, and 3 so far in 2026 — in March, June and September
  • Meanwhile the statutes themselves have barely moved: the narcotics Act was last amended in 2022 and the medicines Act in 2017
  • So what a thing is in Taiwanese criminal law changes several times a year, in an appendix, without a vote

Conclusion

Use decides, and the two lists no longer quite agree on what follows What a reader can take as settled, and what to hold loosely.

• A controlled drug in your own name, for your own use, is a medicine. Pass it to somebody else, buy it online, or take it without a prescription, and the same tablet is a narcotic at the same schedule. The commonest sleeping tablets are fourth-schedule on both lists.
• Check both lists, not one. Etomidate is the standing demonstration that the schedules can differ, and the schedule that decides a criminal penalty is the narcotics one. The medicines list was last amended in September 2026 and the narcotics list in June 2026, by separate notices.
• The date of the conduct is what fixes the schedule. A substance that moved tiers twice in two years was a different offence in August 2024, November 2024 and June 2026, and the schedule in force at the time is the one that applies.
• A pod is not a cigarette. The compounds moved in June 2026 are sold mixed into vape liquid, which is the format the police say lowers a buyer’s guard. Supply of a first-schedule narcotic carries death or life imprisonment whatever it is packaged as.