Igor Domsac | January 27, 2026
Every so often, ayahuasca returns to the headlines, courts, and public debates in Europe. Seizures, criminal proceedings, acquittals, and closed cases coexist in a confusing legal landscape, marked more by prohibitionist inertia than by a careful analysis of current law. In this context, the academic article “Criminal implications of behaviors related to ayahuasca. Study of the material object in ‘other’ crimes against public health,” published in the UNED’s Revista de Derecho Penal y Criminología (Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology), provides a key tool for understanding what the Spanish Criminal Code actually says — and, above all, what it does not say — about this Amazonian drink.
The work, authored by Antonio Martín Pardo, professor of criminal law at the University of Malaga, is not based on ideological positions or moral debates. His approach is strictly legal: to examine whether ayahuasca can, from a technical point of view, fit into the criminal categories designed to protect public health. The question, seemingly simple, reveals a complexity that rarely reaches the media debate.
The publication of this article is not an isolated event. Martín Pardo previously co-authored, together with Juan Muñoz, El estatuto legal de la ayahuasca en España (The Legal Status of Ayahuasca in Spain), a reference work published by a specialized legal publisher and produced in collaboration with ICEERS. This book — considered the most comprehensive and technically advanced legal opinion on the legal status of ayahuasca in Spain — has contributed decisively to raising the rigor of the judicial and doctrinal debate on this issue.
Absence of control
Ayahuasca is not listed as a controlled substance in international drug control conventions. This assertion, reiterated by Spanish and European courts, clashes with a frequent confusion: the presence of DMT in some of the plants that compose it. The article recalls a fundamental point that is often diluted in police proceedings: international control falls on practices involving the isolated molecule, not on plants or traditional preparations that combine them according to ancestral knowledge. This nuance, far from being anecdotal, conditions the entire criminal justice system.
At the same time, the text allows this fact to be placed in a broader and less complacent framework. Although ayahuasca is not controlled at the international level—and is unlikely to be so in the short term—the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) has repeatedly recommended that states adopt controls at the national level. Some European countries, such as France, Italy, and the Netherlands, have chosen this path, prohibiting or restricting ayahuasca through domestic legislation. Comparative experience shows, therefore, that the absence of international control does not equate to automatic or irreversible protection against prohibitionist policies.
Ayahuasca and the limits of criminal law
From this point on, the author ventures into less familiar territory: what he refers to as “other” crimes against public health. Beyond drug trafficking itself, the Criminal Code covers offenses related to medicines, food, chemicals, and potentially dangerous substances. For a crime to exist, it is not enough for something to cause social alarm or institutional discomfort. The conduct must relate to a material object clearly defined by the law, and there must be evidence of an actual or potential impact on public or individual health.
The analysis shows that ayahuasca does not automatically fit into these categories. It does not function as a medicine in the strict legal sense, it is not distributed as an industrial food product, and it does not meet the criminal law definition of a harmful substance as established by case law. Only in very specific scenarios — for example, if a serious and concrete risk to the health of others were demonstrated within a clearly defined framework — could criminal liability be considered. Outside of these scenarios, criminal law loses its natural fit.
This approach is particularly relevant at a time when institutional responses tend to rely on expansive interpretations of punishment. The article uses technical arguments to remind us that criminal law does not operate as a symbolic instrument for expressing cultural rejection, but rather as a tool of last resort, subject to strict limits. When those limits are pushed, the risk of arbitrariness increases.
Legal uncertainty and judicial context
The usefulness of the text goes beyond the academic sphere. It helps to understand why many cases related to ayahuasca end up being dismissed or resolved favorably for the individuals under investigation, and why legal uncertainty persists despite decades of proceedings. Spain is, in fact, one of the countries with the highest number of ayahuasca-related court cases worldwide, with a very high percentage of acquittals. Various rigorous legal analyses — including those developed in collaboration with ICEERS — have contributed to this outcome by providing judges and courts with solid and technically sound interpretive frameworks.
From ICEERS’ perspective, this type of contribution is essential. Not only do they help to defuse alarmist narratives, but they also enable an informed debate on regulation, cultural rights, religious freedom, and public health. Understanding where criminal law applies and where other frameworks — health, administrative, or cultural — are more appropriate is part of a more responsible approach that is in line with the complexity of the phenomenon.
The full article is available in open access in the Revista de Derecho Penal y Criminología (Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology) and is an essential reference for journalists, lawyers, and public officials who wish to approach ayahuasca and criminal law in Spain without prejudice or conceptual shortcuts.
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legality
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