BERN. Two individual substances and one new group of synthetic cannabinoids have been controlled in Switzerland since 10 November. The Federal Department of Home Affairs added them to List e of the Narcotics List Ordinance, the list of raw materials and products with a suspected narcotic-like effect. Manufacture, trade and use are illegal under the Narcotics Act. After this update the list holds 323 individual substances and substance groups. The ordinance took effect on Tuesday morning. Wednesday is the first full day it has been in force.
The department’s reason is the way this market works. Makers change a molecule just enough to step outside the last ban and sell the result under a new name. There are few established findings on the effect, the toxicity, the risk of dependence or the interactions. Because the new substances resemble drugs that are already controlled, the department says a considerable health risk has to be assumed. Controlling a group, rather than one named chemical, is meant to catch the next small alteration before it reaches a shop.
What was added, in plain language
The new group covers pyrazole compounds used as synthetic cannabinoids. Two further entries are individual substances, dicloqualone and ethyl-flualprazolam. The ordinance also tightens the definitions of two synthetic cannabinoid groups that were already listed. Swissmedic, the medicines agency, asked for the update. It watches new synthetic substances with partner authorities in Switzerland and abroad and judges whether they are being abused.
The Keystone-SDA news agency, reporting the department’s notice, said three of the newly covered entries are cannabis-like and are sometimes mixed into vape liquids. Their effect can be much stronger than that of the THC in the cannabis plant, and serious complications can follow. Two others act like strong sedatives and can cause dangerous poisoning when they are combined with other substances. This update does not newly ban the cannabis plant. Industrial use and scientific use of the new entries are exempt from control. Private use is not.
Why Bern keeps rewriting the same list
List e has been updated regularly since December 2011. The department says the point of doing it early is to limit the spread, and to stop Switzerland becoming a place where designer drugs are traded through on their way somewhere else. A list of 323 entries is not 323 new cannabinoids. Many lines are groups, and one group can cover a family of related chemicals. That is the mechanism. It is also why a shopper cannot treat an unfamiliar name on a packet as proof that the product sits outside the law.
The health warning does not need a chemistry degree. These are laboratory substances sold because they imitate a known drug and, for a while, sit outside a list. The department’s position is that the imitation is close enough to treat the risk as real even where a full clinical picture does not yet exist. Anyone who becomes ill after using a synthetic product should get medical help and should tell the clinician the name on the packet if they know it. Trying a second product to offset the first is how combination poisonings get worse.
What changes for a shop, and what does not
From Tuesday, making these substances, selling them and using them privately are narcotics offences. A retailer who was treating a new vape liquid as a grey-area product no longer has that reading for the groups now on List e. A scientific or industrial user who believes an exemption applies needs to be able to say why, against the wording of the ordinance. A workshop label is not itself an exemption.
The department’s notice sets the date and the count of 323. It is not a catalogue for buyers. The useful question, if a product is offered as a legal alternative to a banned drug, is the one the ordinance is written to close: whether a small change in the formula is enough to make it lawful. For the substances and the group added this week, the answer is no. If a packet is already in the house, do not treat a new brand name as a sign that it is uncontrolled. If someone is ill, call a doctor and name the product. The list exists so that the next tweak does not reset the law.