Drug Enforcement Administration

The Drug Enforcement Administration administers the United States federal controlled-substances schedules, under which ibogaine is placed in Schedule I. That classification is the single most consequential legal fact about ibogaine in the United States: it restricts possession, administration, and commercial supply, and it sets the registration and security requirements that any researcher must satisfy before handling the compound. Applications to study ibogaine in humans therefore involve the agency in addition to the Food and Drug Administration, and the practical difficulty of that combined pathway is frequently cited as a reason clinical work has moved to other countries.