Jordan's Narcotics Law Penalties: Consult a Drug Lawyer

One of the most shocking moments for a Jordanian family is a phone call saying that a relative has been arrested in a drug case. Panic and confusion push many people into wrong decisions in the first hours of the case, even though these are the hours in which a great deal is decided. These cases are governed by the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Law No. 23 of 2016 as amended by Law No. 24 of 2021, they fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of the State Security Court, and their penalties range from months of imprisonment to life hard labor and the death penalty. The characterization of the act, the direction of the investigation, and the possibility of taking the treatment route instead of punishment are all turning points that require a specialist lawyer from the first hour, not after days or weeks.

This article gives a general legal picture of drug cases in Jordan under a law that is extremely strict on promotion and trafficking offenses, while opening alternative routes for some users. The aim here is to introduce the reader to the framework, not to equip them with the tools of a defense, since a defense is built on a specific file, not on a general article.

1. Classification of Offenses in Jordan's Narcotics Law

The law classifies drug offenses along two intersecting axes:

The first axis: the nature of the act

Use and personal consumption
Possession for personal use
Promotion and distribution, and acting as an intermediary in them
Trafficking in its various forms, including possession, transport and sale with intent to traffic
Smuggling and bringing in (bringing substances into the Kingdom or taking them out of it)
Manufacture, production and cultivation
Preparing or running a place for drug use
Entrapping another person by planting a narcotic substance on them with intent to harm them
Using the information network or means of publication to incite dealing in drugs or to promote them

The second axis: the type of substance

Narcotic substances listed in Schedules (1) to (4) annexed to the law
Psychotropic substances listed in Schedules (5) to (9)
Preparations listed in Schedule (10)
Chemical precursors used in manufacture, listed in Schedules (11) and (12)

The penalty varies greatly depending on where the two axes intersect. Personal possession of a small quantity is not treated like trafficking in a large quantity, and the penalty for use itself changes depending on the schedule in which the substance falls. This intersection alone explains why the penalties differ in cases that may look similar to a non-specialist. Under Article 37, the Council of Ministers may amend these schedules by adding or removing substances, which is why identifying the schedule of the seized substance at the time of the offense is among the first things the lawyer checks in the laboratory report.

2. The Fundamental Difference Between the "User" and the "Trafficker"

The distinction between user and trafficker is the most important point of legal characterization in drug cases, and the difference between the two categories can mean a difference of many years in the penalty, and even the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony. This distinction is decided by reading a set of interwoven indicators, including the circumstances of the seizure, the type and quantity of the substance, the laboratory results, the statements made, and the physical setting of the incident. Each of these indicators can be read in more than one direction, and this is exactly the crux of specialist legal work: recharacterizing the file, in cases that allow it, from "trafficking" to "possession for personal use" rests on a technical examination of the seized items and the official reports, and is not built from reading a general article or by analogy with earlier files.

Practical note: Many cases that end in a successful recharacterization are the result of the lawyer scrutinizing the details of the report and the procedures from the first hours, and the later the intervention, the narrower the margins for this recharacterization become. The legal position is not assessed on a general impression of the size of the quantity, but on a study of the file itself, or by consulting a specialist lawyer.

3. Penalties: An Overview

Penalties are graded by act and substance, and the table in the next section sets out their figures as they appear in the text of the law. In general terms:

Use and possession for personal use:

Imprisonment together with a fine, for periods that differ according to the substance's schedule, and the penalty does not reach a labor sentence as long as the intent is personal use. The law opens a treatment route as an alternative to punishment in specified cases, covered in the section on alternative treatment below.

Promotion and trafficking:

Temporary labor for promotion, and temporary hard labor for trafficking, with large fines. The penalty is aggravated if the act involves a minor, and, in trafficking, in the case of a repeat offense.

Smuggling, manufacture and cultivation with intent to traffic:

Among the most severe penalties in the law, reaching life hard labor in aggravated cases, and the death penalty if the offense is linked to an international gang.

The aggravating circumstances set out in the law:

Repetition of the offense (recidivism)
Acting together with a minor or using a minor in the offense, or the person to whom the substance was supplied being a minor
The offense of preparing a place being committed in an educational or correctional institution, in places of treatment or in places of worship
The status of the offender, if they are among the officials charged with combating or monitoring drugs
The offense being linked to an international gang or to another international offense

Provisions that may soften the effect of the file or prevent punishment:

Use or possession for personal use not being considered a criminal record or a security record entry the first time
The possibility of substituting treatment for punishment in the offense of use
Exemption from punishment in felonies for a person who comes forward to report, under the precise conditions of Article 27
The discretionary mitigating circumstances available to the court, noting that the law bars them in promotion in the case of a repeat offense and in offenses of preparing places for drug use

4. Table of Penalties for Drug Offenses Under Law No. 23 of 2016

The following table sets out the main forms of the offenses, the article governing each form and the penalty as it appears in the text. The State Security Court has jurisdiction over all the offenses set out in this law under Article 33(a), and it sits as a juvenile court if the accused is a juvenile under Article 33(b).

Form of the offense	Article	Penalty as it appears in the text	Classification
Use or possession for personal use: substances in Schedules (1), (2), (4), (5) and (6)	9(a)(1)	Imprisonment for not less than one year and not more than three years, and a fine of not less than one thousand Jordanian dinars (JOD) and not more than three thousand dinars	Misdemeanor
Use or possession for personal use: substances in Schedules (7) and (8)	9(a)(2)	Imprisonment for not less than six months and not more than one year, and a fine of not less than five hundred dinars and not more than one thousand dinars	Misdemeanor
Use or possession for personal use: substances in Schedule (10)	9(a)(3)	Imprisonment for not less than three months and not more than six months, and a fine of not less than two hundred dinars and not more than five hundred dinars	Misdemeanor
Use or possession for personal use: substances in Schedules (3) and (9)	9(a)(4)	Imprisonment for not less than one month and not more than six months, or a fine of not less than two hundred dinars and not more than five hundred dinars, or both penalties	Misdemeanor
Planting a narcotic substance on another person with intent to harm or entrap them	8(a)	Imprisonment for not less than two years, and a fine of not less than two thousand dinars and not more than five thousand dinars	Misdemeanor
Entrapping another person where it leads to a judicial investigation and what was attributed to them constitutes a felony	8(b)	Temporary labor, and a fine of not less than five thousand dinars and not more than ten thousand dinars	Felony
Promotion or acting as an intermediary in it	15(a)	Temporary labor for not less than five years, and a fine of not less than five thousand dinars	Felony
Promotion together with or using a minor, or to a minor	15(b)	Temporary labor for not less than ten years, and a fine of not less than ten thousand dinars	Felony
Preparing, running or setting up a place for drug use	18(a)	Temporary hard labor for not less than five years, and a fine of not less than three thousand dinars and not more than fifteen thousand dinars	Felony
Trafficking: possession, transport, sale, bringing in, smuggling, production or cultivation with intent to traffic	19(a)	Temporary hard labor for not less than fifteen years, and a fine of not less than ten thousand dinars and not more than twenty thousand dinars	Felony
Trafficking combined with a repeat offense, with the status of an official charged with combating drugs, or acting together with a minor	19(b)	Life hard labor, and a fine of not less than twenty thousand dinars and not more than thirty thousand dinars	Felony
Trafficking together with an international gang, or combined with another international offense	20	The death penalty	Felony
Using the information network or means of publication to incite dealing in drugs or to promote them	23(a)	Temporary labor, and a fine of not less than three thousand dinars and not more than five thousand dinars	Felony

In Article 28, the law punishes the accomplice, the accessory and the instigator with the penalty of the principal offender, and it punishes an attempt to commit a felony with the penalty for the completed offense. A person who thinks their role in an incident was "marginal" may therefore find themselves facing the same penalty set for the principal. Which row of this table the file settles in takes shape during the investigation, and that is the space in which the lawyer works before the charge settles into its most severe form. The more the charge moves from misdemeanor to felony, the wider its effects become, reaching the family itself, since in felonies the law allows a precautionary attachment of the assets of the accused and of their ascendants, descendants and spouse, and a travel ban on them.

5. The Penalty for First-Time and Second-Time Use

The penalty for first-time drug use in Jordan is the same one set out in Article 9(a) according to the substance's schedule: the law does not exempt from punishment merely because it is the first time. But paragraph (b) of the same Article provides that the act of use or possession for personal use is not considered a criminal record or a security record entry against the person who commits it for the first time. This is an effect that goes beyond the penalty to the person's entire future: employment, the certificate of no criminal record, travel, and everything that passes through the record.

The second time, this protection falls away, and the incident counts as a criminal record and a security record entry. The law does not provide a separate penalty band for a person caught using for the second time, so the penal provision remains Article 9(a) itself, with reference made, for the rules on repeat offending, to the general rules of the Penal Code under Article 34 of the Narcotics Law, and with judgments issued by the competent courts, and even foreign judgments, relied on to prove a repeat offense under Article 28(c). In offenses of trafficking and preparing places, repeat offending is an express aggravating circumstance that raises the penalty to higher bands, and in promotion a repeat offense bars the court from applying discretionary mitigating circumstances.

What decides the position the second time, then, is not only the size of the penalty but whether the first incident was recorded at all, how it was characterized, and whether the treatment route is still open before the court. These are matters the lawyer builds on the client's record and the documents of the earlier file, and they cannot be answered from outside the papers.

6. Alternative Treatment: A Cornerstone of the 2016 Law

One of the most important features of Jordan's current narcotics law is the option of treatment as an alternative to punishment in the offense of use. The legislature's philosophy is that an addict is a patient before being a criminal, and that treating them is more useful to society than imprisoning them.

What the text provides in this area:

A public-right action (the State's right to prosecute) is not brought against a user or addict who, before being caught, comes forward on their own initiative or through a relative to the specialized treatment centers belonging to an official body, to the Anti-Narcotics Department, or to any police station, asking to be treated (Article 9(f)).
When hearing an offense of use, the court may decide, instead of imposing the penalty, to place the accused in a specialized treatment facility, or to have them treated at a clinic specializing in the psychological and social treatment of addicts (Article 9(c)).
The law requires complete confidentiality about the identity of those being treated and any information relating to them, and it punishes anyone who discloses it with imprisonment for not more than one year and a fine of not more than five hundred dinars (Article 9(e)).

Assessing whether the accused is eligible to benefit from this route is a complex legal and medical matter that connects the characterization of the charge, the condition of the accused, their prior record, and the timing of raising the matter before the court. Family guesswork, or reliance on information carried over from other cases, has no place here. Raising treatment in the wrong place may be read as an admission that harms the defense on another part of the file, which is why the lawyer usually begins this assessment in the first days after the seizure.

7. The Course of the Case: The General Framework

A drug case passes through three successive stages, each handled by different parties with distinct powers:

The stage of seizure and police investigation: The Anti-Narcotics Department of the Public Security Directorate carries out the seizure and search operations, followed by an initial police interrogation. This stage contains precise procedural safeguards relating to the lawfulness of the search, the documentation of the seized items and the rights of the accused during interrogation, and assessing whether they were respected or breached is a purely technical matter. The lawyer's presence from the first interrogation is one of the most decisive points in the fate of the file, and missing it in the first hours is very hard to make up for later.

The stage of investigation before the Public Prosecution of the State Security Court: The file moves to the competent Public Prosecutor, who decides essential matters including pretrial detention, completion of the investigation, characterization of the charge (use, possession, promotion, trafficking, smuggling), and referral of the file to court. In the felonies set out in the law, the Public Prosecution may investigate the sources of the respondent's assets and order a precautionary attachment of them, and even of the assets of their ascendants, descendants and spouse, and bar them from traveling until the case is decided (Article 21). The characterization is settled at this stage: the charge on which the accused is referred to court sets the ceiling of the penalty, which is why the real work of the defense begins here, not in the courtroom.

The trial stage: The file is referred to the State Security Court, which alone has jurisdiction over the offenses in this law and the accessory penalties and civil obligations that follow from them (Article 33(a)). The trial takes place in the presence of the accused and their lawyer, and the defense has full scope to argue the case and examine the witnesses, including the officers who made the arrest. Judgments of the State Security Court are appealed directly to the Court of Cassation, with no intermediate appeal stage, which makes what is built before the State Security Court itself the foundation of any later appeal.

The file is sometimes not limited to the drug charge alone. A weapon may be seized together with the substance, giving rise to a separate charge heard under its own provisions, as in cases of unlicensed weapon possession, and the accused may, in the same file, be charged with an offense against property of the kind dealt with under theft offenses in the Penal Code. Multiple charges change the calculation of the overall penalty and the order of the defense's priorities, and this is in itself a legal question that merits consultation before any statement is given.

8. The Nature of the Defense in Drug Files

The defense in drug cases does not follow a single template carried over from one file to another. Depending on the facts of each file, it rests on procedural lines concerning the soundness of the seizure and search procedures and the safeguards of interrogation; on substantive lines concerning the recharacterization of the act and the reading of the indicators of intent; on circumstantial lines concerning the health of the accused and their eligibility for the alternative treatment route; or on evidential lines concerning the sufficiency of the evidence relied on by the prosecution. Giving one line priority over another is a strategic matter the lawyer builds on the evidence in the file alone, and the line that succeeds in one case may fail completely in another that looks similar on the surface. This is precisely what makes relying on ready-made "recipes" from published cases, or ones heard from acquaintances, a common mistake that costs the file dearly.

9. The First 48 Hours: Why You Need Specialist Intervention

The first moments after a family member is arrested are the moments in which the structure of the case takes shape, and it is very hard to change later. In them the first statements are given before the investigator, an initial characterization of the charge is made, and procedural decisions are taken on pretrial detention, testing and referral. Specialist presence during this period is among the most important factors in determining the course of the final judgment.

On the other hand, many families fall into recurring categories of mistakes that harm the file: well-intentioned attempts to contact the investigating authorities directly, making statements on social media or to the relative's circle, unintentionally influencing potential witnesses, and relying on non-specialist advice from acquaintances who went through "similar" experiences. Each of these actions may be interpreted differently from what was intended, and become part of the file itself. The safest framework in these hours is to open a direct and exclusive line of communication with the specialist lawyer, and to leave everything else to them.

Urgent: What is recorded at the investigation stage is hard to remedy before the State Security Court, and after that the judgments allow only an appeal before the Court of Cassation. Do not make any statement about the source of the substance or about other people, and do not sign any report, before a specialist lawyer is present.

10. Frequently Asked Questions

What is the penalty for first-time drug use in Jordan?

The penalty the first time is the same one set in Article 9(a), and it is determined by the substance's schedule: substances in Schedules (1), (2), (4), (5) and (6), for example, carry imprisonment from one year to three years and a fine from one thousand to three thousand dinars. The essential difference the first time is that the act is not considered a criminal record or a security record entry under Article 9(b), and the court may substitute treatment for punishment under Article 9(c).

What is the legal position on second-time drug use in Jordan?

The law does not set a separate penalty band for second-time use, so the provision remains Article 9(a), but the protection from a criminal record and a security record entry is limited to the first time. Reference is made to the general rules of the Penal Code on repeat offending, and the lawyer assesses their effect according to what was recorded in the first incident and how it was characterized.

What is the penalty for drug promotion in Jordanian law?

In Article 15(a), the law punishes promotion or acting as an intermediary in it with temporary labor for not less than five years and a fine of not less than five thousand dinars, rising to at least ten years and a fine of not less than ten thousand dinars if the promotion involves a minor. Trafficking, under Article 19(a), carries temporary hard labor for not less than fifteen years.

Which court has jurisdiction over drug cases in Jordan?

The State Security Court has jurisdiction over all the offenses set out in the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Law under Article 33(a), including accessory penalties and civil obligations, and its judgments are appealed before the Court of Cassation.

What if the quantity seized is very small?

A small quantity does not negate the offense entirely, but it is read together with the other indicators in the file, and the result of that reading may differ depending on the other circumstances and on the type of substance and its schedule.

Is using once enough for the penalty to apply?

Yes. The law does not require addiction to criminalize use. But the circumstances of the case differ between a one-time user and a chronic addict, a difference that is reflected in the court's assessment and in the possibility of taking the treatment route.

Is use recorded on the record even if it is the first time?

Article 9(b) provides that use or possession for personal use is not considered a criminal record or a security record entry against the person who commits it for the first time. What follows from a second time, and from any characterization more serious than use, is different, which is what makes the characterization the first file settles on so important.

What if the accused is a minor?

Notwithstanding the provisions of the Juveniles Law, the State Security Court sits as a juvenile court to hear drug offenses committed by juveniles under Article 33(b). Using a minor in promotion or trafficking is also an aggravating circumstance against the adult.

Legal Consultation

Drug cases are among the most sensitive files. On the side of the accused, the difference lies between a misdemeanor of use that is not recorded as a criminal record the first time and a felony of promotion or trafficking whose penalty is measured in years; on the side of the family, the effect extends to the attachment of assets and travel bans. A procedural error in the investigation, a delay in bringing in a lawyer, or a wrong characterization of the act may cost the accused additional years that are hard to remedy later. Because the State Security Court has jurisdiction over these offenses, Alabwini Law Firm provides defense in drug cases before the State Security Court from the moment of arrest, and for more detail on specific charges the site covers possession of narcotic substances for personal use and the difference between drug possession, use and trafficking. You can contact Alabwini Law Firm & Legal Consultancy to arrange a specialist consultation.

Drug Cases in Jordanian Law: Penalties and What the Accused and Their Family Should Know