21 U.S.C. § 813
Section 813 · Treatment of controlled substance analogues
This is § 203 of the Controlled Substances Act
Amended 3 times on record
Applied in 90 court decisions — leading case United States v. Brown (2005)
Most recently applied in United States v. Mohammad Al Sharairei (March 2025)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
A controlled substance analogue shall, to the extent intended for human consumption, be treated, for the purposes of any Federal law as a controlled substance in schedule I.
In determining whether a controlled substance analogue was intended for human consumption under subsection (a), the following factors may be considered, along with any other relevant factors:
(1) The marketing, advertising, and labeling of the substance.
(2) The known efficacy or usefulness of the substance for the marketed, advertised, or labeled purpose.
(3) The difference between the price at which the substance is sold and the price at which the substance it is purported to be or advertised as is normally sold.
(4) The diversion of the substance from legitimate channels and the clandestine importation, manufacture, or distribution of the substance.
(5) Whether the defendant knew or should have known the substance was intended to be consumed by injection, inhalation, ingestion, or any other immediate means.
(6) Any controlled substance analogue that is manufactured, formulated, sold, distributed, or marketed with the intent to avoid the provisions of existing drug laws.
For purposes of this section, evidence that a substance was not marketed, advertised, or labeled for human consumption, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish that the substance was not intended for human consumption.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
References in Text
Schedule I, referred to in subsec. (a), is set out in section 812(c) of this title.
Amendments
2018—Pub. L. 115–271 designated existing provisions as subsec. (a), inserted heading, and added subsecs. (b) and (c).
1988—Pub. L. 100–690 substituted "any Federal law" for "this subchapter and subchapter II of this chapter".