Drug Scheduling · Etomidate · Criminal Law · Taiwan · East Asia · Statute ExplainerEffective 27 June 2026; lists current to 15 September 2026
Taiwan’s two drug lists
Schedule Four Medicine, Schedule One Drug
The Republic of China schedules the same chemicals twice. The Controlled Drugs Management Act lists them as medicines; the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act lists them as crimes. Both run four schedules, and for almost everything on them the two agree — so what separates a prescription from a felony is how the thing is used, not what it is. On 27 June 2026 nine etomidate compounds moved to the narcotics first schedule and stayed where they were on the medicines list. The first schedule, whose representatives the Act itself names as heroin, morphine, opium and cocaine, now holds eighteen.
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
| Standing | What | Where it is recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Confirmed | Nine etomidate-type compounds became first-schedule narcotics, moved up from the second schedule, with effect from 27 June 2026 | Executive Yuan Gazette, vol 32 no 116 |
| Confirmed | Each new entry carries a note saying which second-schedule item it was moved from, and the nine old items are marked deleted in the same notice | Executive Yuan Gazette, vol 32 no 116 |
| Confirmed | Etomidate remains the eightieth item of the fourth schedule of controlled drugs, where it was placed on 2 August 2024 | The health ministry’s own summary of every amendment to the list |
| Confirmed | The first nine items of both first schedules are the same nine substances: the classical opiates, plus cocaine | Both lists, read in full |
| Confirmed, not verifiable here | On the first day of effect the police recorded 55 etomidate cases, 63 arrests, 18 bottles of e-liquid, 109 pods and 49 drug-driving cases | Criminal Investigation Bureau figures, carried by the national news agency |
What the move changes
Manufacture, transport or sale of a second-schedule narcotic carries life imprisonment or ten years and up. At the first schedule it carries death or life imprisonment. Use goes from up to three years to six months to five years.
And what it does not
Nothing about the substance as a medicine. Etomidate is a short-acting intravenous anaesthetic and it stays a fourth-schedule controlled drug, which is the lightest of the four tiers a doctor prescribes under.
Timeline
Four schedule changes in under two years The Criminal Investigation Bureau calls this pace a first in the country’s drug-control history.
- 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 Aug 2024Etomidate becomes a fourth-schedule controlled drug, item eighty
- 5 Aug 2024Three days later it becomes a third-schedule narcotic
- 27 Nov 2024Reclassified again, to the second schedule
- 11 Aug 2025The Constitutional Court’s two-year deadline falls. The Act is not amended, and has not been since
- 27 Aug 2025Three etomidate analogues are added as second-schedule controlled drugs, and item eighty is rewritten to cover its isomers
- 20 Nov 2025Saliva rapid-test kits enter routine police use, which is one of two reasons the referral figures below climb
- 17 Jun 2026The justice ministry’s review committee approves the move to the first schedule
- 25 Jun 2026The Executive Yuan announces it, and the gazette carries the amended appendices the next day
- 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 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.
Article 2 of the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act defines a narcotic by three properties — addictiveness, liability to abuse, and harm to society — sorts them into four schedules, and then hands something away. Medical and scientific use of the same substances, it says, is governed by a different statute.
That statute is the Controlled Drugs Management Act, and its Article 3 does not use the same test. It sorts on four properties: habituation and dependence are added to abuse and social harm. It limits controlled drugs to medical and scientific need. And it gives the job to a committee appointed by the health ministry alone, where the narcotics committee is convened by the justice ministry jointly with health and reviews the list every three months.
So the two lists are built by different people applying different criteria under different ministries, and are published as separate appendices amended by separate notices. That they agree about almost everything is a working convention, not a legal requirement. Nothing in either Act obliges one to follow the other, and on 27 June 2026 one of them moved without the other.
- 3 / 4Criteria the narcotics list uses, against the medicines list
- 3Months between reviews of the narcotics list, written into the Act
- 0Votes in the legislature needed to change either list; the Act requires only that it be told
| Controlled Drugs Management Act | Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act | |
|---|---|---|
| What it calls them | Controlled drugs | Narcotics |
| Criteria | Habituation, dependence, abuse, social harm | Addictiveness, abuse, social harm |
| Who decides | A committee of the health ministry | The justice ministry with the health ministry |
| Permitted use | Medical and scientific need only | None — anything outside the other Act is an offence |
| Statute last amended | 14 June 2017 | 4 May 2022 |
| List last amended | 15 September 2026, the fiftieth time | 27 June 2026 |
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.
| Offence | First schedule | Second | Third | Fourth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manufacture, transport, sale | Death or life | Life or 10 yr+ | 7 yr+ | 5–12 yr |
| Possession intending sale | Life or 10 yr+ | 5 yr+ | 3–10 yr | 1–7 yr |
| Transfer to another | 1–7 yr | 6 mo–5 yr | ≤3 yr | ≤1 yr |
| Use | 6 mo–5 yr | ≤3 yr | Fine and a class | Fine and a class |
| Possession, over the weight threshold | 1–7 yr, over 10 g | 6 mo–5 yr, over 20 g | ≤2 yr, over 5 g | ≤1 yr, over 5 g |
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
| Also worth knowing | Detail |
|---|---|
| There is no fifth schedule | Article 2 says four, in terms. The fourth carries a precursor annex, which is sometimes described as a fifth tier and is not one |
| A naming defect in the medicines list | The Chinese name 古柯 stands for cocaine at the first schedule and for the coca plant at the second, in the same document; only the English column tells them apart. The narcotics list and the Act both distinguish the two |
| Why a drug with no medical use is still a medicine | The medicines Act covers medical and scientific need. Listing a compound is what lets a laboratory lawfully hold a reference standard and test for it. Our reading, joining the Act’s wording to the notices’ own statement that the added compounds have no medical use |
| Seizures | 849.5 kg of etomidate-type drugs seized to the end of April 2026, which the police say kept 8.5 million pods off the market |
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.
Settled
The two lists overlap almost completely, so for nearly every controlled drug the question is whether the use is medical or scientific. The first schedule of narcotics now holds eighteen substances where it held nine, and half of it is one drug family. Etomidate sits three schedules apart on the two lists.
Hold loosely
How many substances in total sit on one list and not the other. The fourth schedules differ by four live items, so the three usually named are probably not all of them, and no source read here settles the rest. And the drug-driving curve is a curve of referrals measured through two changes in how police detect.
- 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.
Take-home and sources
- the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act and its four appendices at the Ministry of Justice’s law database
- the Controlled Drugs Management Act
- the Food and Drug Administration’s 「管制藥品分級及品項」 page, its consolidated list current to the fiftieth notice, and its summary of every amendment
- the Executive Yuan Gazette, vol 32 no 116 (26 Jun 2026)
- Constitutional Court judgment 112年憲判字第13號 (11 Aug 2023)
- and two reports by 黃麗芸 for 中央社 (28 Jun 2026 and 5 Jul 2026). All read 5 October 2026.