Ibogaine in Brazil

Three positions that do not agree

Brazil is the most legally confused jurisdiction we cover, and unpicking it requires holding three separate facts at once.

It is not a controlled substance. Neither Tabernanthe iboga nor substances extracted from it appear in the lists annexed to Portaria SVS/MS 344/98, the instrument that places substances under special control in Brazil. The lists have been amended more than a hundred times since 1998, and the substance is absent from the version consolidated in July 2026. ANVISA says so itself, in words a 2020 federal technical note went on to quote: nem a planta nem as substâncias dela extraídas estão sujeitas a controle especial no Brasil. There is no drug schedule offence.

The federal regulator says it cannot be sold. ANVISA has published a formal statement, Tratamentos com ibogaína não estão regulamentados, saying that ibogaine treatments are not regulated, that the substance has not been evaluated or approved by the agency, and that because it is produced outside the country and has undergone no analysis, its commercialisation in national territory is prohibited.

One state council set conditions. At its 90th ordinary meeting on 29 October 2015 the São Paulo State Council on Drug Policies, CONED-SP, adopted four enunciados, published in the state gazette on 14 January 2016. The fourth says that active principles derived from Tabernanthe iboga, and ibogaine formulations in particular, may only be administered for problematic substance use in a hospital environment, under medical supervision and control, with thorough clinical and psychiatric examination, psychological assessment and psychotherapeutic follow-up. The third says semi-synthetic and synthetic compounds based on those principles must have their therapeutic potential investigated through scientific research. The first two set the general position that psychedelics in addiction treatment require scientific investigation and public research funding.

Three bodies have spoken, and they do not say the same thing.

What ANVISA’s statement is, and is not

It matters that ANVISA acted. Most countries that leave ibogaine unscheduled say nothing at all; Brazil’s regulator put its position on the record, as the Dutch and Costa Rican authorities have.

What it says is narrow and clear: the substance is unevaluated, so it may not be commercialised, and the one exception is importation for clinical research under RDC 204/2006. That is a statement about market authorisation rather than a drug offence, but it does not leave the field empty. Supplying a product intended for therapeutic use without sanitary registration is a crime under article 273 of the Penal Code, and ANVISA has ordered the seizure and destruction of ibogaine products sold by Brazilian companies.

What it establishes for a reader is the more important point. No Brazilian authority has assessed ibogaine for safety or efficacy. Whatever a provider claims about their protocol, they are not working with an approved medicine, and the regulator has said so in writing.

The São Paulo conditions

The CONED-SP statements are the closest thing in the Americas to a public framework for ibogaine treatment, and they deserve reading for what they require rather than for the headline that they legalised it. They did not.

Two conditions are doing the work: under medical supervision, and in a hospital environment. Both target the risk that kills people. A hospital setting is where an arrhythmia can be managed; medical supervision is what notices it starting.

That is a considerably stronger design than the retreat model operating in Mexico and Costa Rica, and it is worth noting that the body which thought hardest about ibogaine treatment concluded it belonged in a hospital. It could not, however, make anyone comply.

The federal government went the other way

In August 2020 the national secretariat for drug care and prevention, SENAPRED, then part of the Ministry of Citizenship, issued Nota Técnica 64/2020 declaring itself absolutamente contrária to the use of ibogaine for treating chemical dependency in any clinical or therapeutic context, pending robust evidence of efficacy and safety. It added that accredited therapeutic communities are not authorised to use it and risk losing their accreditation if they do.

Neither the ministry nor the secretariat still exists in that form: the 2023 reorganisation moved drug policy to the Ministry of Justice. Nothing has replaced or withdrawn the note, and no federal instrument since has mentioned ibogaine at all.

That position is five years more recent than São Paulo’s statements and points the other way. A reader told that Brazil permits hospital treatment is being given the older and weaker of the two signals.

What to establish with a Brazilian provider

Given the contradictions, the questions are specific:

• Which instrument do you say permits this, and who issued it? The São Paulo council statements are recommendations, not an authorisation.
• Is the treatment delivered in a hospital environment, as the São Paulo council recommended?
• Which physician supervises, and in what discipline are they registered?
• Where does the ibogaine come from, given that ANVISA prohibits its commercialisation?

That last one has no comfortable answer, and it is the one worth pressing.

Brazil in context

Brazil sits awkwardly across the categories: unscheduled federally, refused a market by its own regulator, and the subject of hospital-only conditions recommended by one state council that bind nobody.

See the status by country table for the comparison, and Mexico for what an unscheduled country looks like when nobody writes one.