Ibogaine in the Netherlands
Ibogaine is not on the Opium Act lists, and the Dutch public health institute has formally advised against using it. Both are true at once.
Ibogaine is not on the Opium Act lists, so no Dutch drug offence attaches to it. It is also not a registered medicine, which means it cannot lawfully be supplied as one. In 2024 the national public health institute assessed iboga products at the health ministry’s request and advised consumers not to use them.
Unscheduled, and assessed anyway
The Netherlands has a reputation for permissiveness on drugs that does most of the work in how its ibogaine position is reported. The reality is more specific and more interesting.
Ibogaine is not named in the lists annexed to the Opium Act. There is no drug offence in possessing it, and that absence is why iboga preparations are sold to Dutch consumers, mainly online, and why facilities have operated in the country.
But the Netherlands did something almost no other unscheduled jurisdiction has done: it looked at the substance anyway.
What the state actually concluded
In March 2024 RIVM, the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, published an assessment of the safety of herbal preparations containing Tabernanthe iboga, carried out at the request of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. The commission goes back to a ministry announcement of December 2020. The resulting letter report, 2024-0030, is the most useful official document on ibogaine produced by any European government.
Its conclusion is not equivocal. RIVM advises consumers not to use herbal preparations containing Tabernanthe iboga.
The reasoning, in the report’s own summary: the main side effect is disturbance of the heart rhythm, and in the worst case people can die from it. Dozens of deaths have been reported worldwide after use of the herb, including cases in the Netherlands. Other commonly occurring adverse effects are nausea and vomiting, or more seriously acute psychosis, seizures and hallucinations, and these can arise at levels commonly used.
This is the single most useful fact about the Dutch position, and it is the one missing from every account that describes the Netherlands as permissive. The absence of a schedule entry is not an endorsement. Here it sits alongside an explicit warning from the state’s own scientific institute.
| Position | Instrument | |
|---|---|---|
| Drug law | Not scheduled, no offence | Absent from Lijst I, IA and II of the Opium Act |
| Medicines law | Not registered, medicinal use not permitted | Geneesmiddelenwet |
| Consumer sale | Legal in practice, formally warned against | RIVM letter report 2024-0030 |
| Cardiac screening | Nothing requires it | No regime to attach it to |
Not a medicine either
The second half of the Dutch position is easy to miss. Iboga and ibogaine are not registered as medicines in the Netherlands, and use as a medicinal product is therefore not permitted.
That produces the same shape as Costa Rica or Mexico, arrived at from a different direction. There is no drug offence, and there is also no lawful medical route. A facility administering ibogaine is not committing a drug offence and is not practising authorised medicine either.
The market that has grown in the gap is a consumer one. RIVM’s framing is telling: it treated iboga as a herbal preparation sold online to the public, because that is mainly what it is in the Netherlands, rather than as a clinical treatment.
What this means if you are in the Netherlands
Buying is possible and unwise. Products are available, unregulated in composition, and the subject of a formal warning from the state’s own institute. Nobody checks what is in them: RIVM found that products sold online as ibogaine ranged from 15 to 50 per cent ibogaine by weight, which is the difference between one dose and three.
Nobody is required to screen you. The cardiac risk RIVM identified is manageable with an ECG and monitoring. Nothing in the Dutch position requires either, because there is no regime to attach the requirement to.
Import and export remain separate questions. Carrying it out of the Netherlands into a country that schedules it is an offence there, whatever its status here.
The Netherlands in context
Seven jurisdictions in our table have never scheduled ibogaine, and the Netherlands is the one that has done the most homework about it. Mexico and Costa Rica host the treatment sector and have said comparatively little, though Costa Rica’s health ministry has warned against therapeutic use and Brazil’s regulator has barred sale outright. Germany reached a similar position through medicines law and has published nothing at all.
Read together they make a useful point: the countries where ibogaine is easiest to obtain are not the countries that have judged it safe. They are the countries that never built a regime, and only some of them have said so out loud.
See the status by country table for the comparison, and the treatment section for what to ask a provider anywhere.
Common questions
Sources
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