Egypt’s health minister Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar on Tuesday issued a decree replacing the schedules attached to the Anti-Drug Law, a move intended to shore up the legal basis for drug prosecutions after the Supreme Constitutional Court ruled that only the minister, not the Egyptian Drug Authority (EDA), can amend drug classifications.
On Monday, the court found unconstitutional decisions by the head of the EDA to amend the drug schedules, saying that authority is exclusively vested in the health minister. The ruling effectively resets the schedules to how they stood before the authority was created six years ago and could allow some of those convicted under the EDA’s decisions to seek lighter penalties or argue their convictions are null and void.
The Health Ministry said the decision restores the proper constitutional and legal framework for amending schedules of narcotics and psychotropic drugs, while strengthening pharmaceutical and security oversight to better protect society from drug use and illicit trafficking.
With the schedules now replaced, prosecutors and criminal courts have a sound legal basis to proceed without fears that arrests or charges could be voided, a senior criminal judge said, adding that the move was meant to close the legal gap created by the constitutional ruling and block future defense challenges tied to the earlier procedural flaw.
As for drug cases already brought under the EDA head’s now-invalidated decisions, whether still pending or already adjudicated, Cairo University criminal law professor Ossama Ebeid said outcomes will depend on a close legal review of whether the substance had already been listed in valid schedules issued by the competent minister or was added for the first time through the unconstitutional decisions.
Ebeid distinguished between substances that were already listed legally but were moved by the EDA head from a schedule with lighter penalties to a harsher one, and substances that were not listed in any legally approved schedule and were added for the first time under the struck-down decisions.
In the first scenario, he said, the impact would likely be limited to retrials aimed at sentence reductions, with the underlying criminalization unchanged and defendants able to benefit from older, lighter penalties.
In the second scenario, Ebeid said, the legal basis for criminalization would fall away, requiring the release of those held in pretrial detention in such cases or immediate acquittals because the necessary legislative foundation for criminal liability would no longer exist.
