It is this very lack of regulated testing that has led ibogaine to remain a Schedule I drug around the globe, being that as of 2009, the only countries where ibogaine is unregulated by government legislation are Canada, Mexico, and Portugal.
In the United Kingdom, for example, although it is legal to possess ibogaine under the Misuse of Drugs Act of 2015, its distribution remains illegal to date.
In Germany, ibogaine, though unregulated, can be regulated by the German Medicinal Products Act (AMG.)
In Nordic territories, only in Denmark is it possible for a doctor to administer ibogaine, and even then, the physician must procure a special permission from the Danish Ministry of Health.
In neighbouring Sweden, by comparison, it remains to date a Schedule I drug.
In Norway, as with all tryptamine derivatives, ibogaine remains illegal.
Although in Brazil, it is possible for a physician to administer ibogaine, they must request that it be imported from a facility certified by the General Medical Council (GMC), and even then, only in the precise amount required for treatment.
In 2009, New Zealand held it as a non-approved prescription medicine.
In the US, curiously, one of the countries with a nationwide opiate addiction crisis as marketed by and profited from by Big Pharma giants such as Purdue Pharmaceuticals, to name but one, ibogaine remains, quite ironically, (though not surprisingly) classified as a Schedule I controlled substance.
It is therefore not approved for the treatment of addictions (or, for that matter, for any other therapeutic use), purportedly because of its hallucinogenic, cardiovascular, and neurotoxic effects.
In a grand show of hypocrisy, the US government has always had issues with ibogaine based on the lack of data from significant testing on human subjects, as well as the low efficiency of what tests have been undertaken.
Curiously enough, in the late 1990s, the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had absolutely no problem in releasing the highly addictive opiate Oxycontin into the market.
That it might enslave and kill people was deemed an acceptable casualty, so long as it made the country a gargantuan profit. This considered, it is no small wonder the US government remains to this day adverse to any successful cure for opiate addiction.
In the remaining countries not mentioned above, it benefits from an unregulated and unlicensed status.
