Molport Policy on Controlled Substances

Molport has a well-defined and clear policy on handling controlled substances, as described below. Application of this policy may result in some compounds that have been ordered having the order cancelled by Molport. This document explains the policy and how it is implemented.

1. What Is a Controlled Substance?

According to Wikipedia, a controlled substance is generally a drug or chemical whose manufacture, possession, or use is regulated by a government, such as illicitly used drugs or prescription medications that are designated by law. Some treaties provide internationally agreed-upon schedules of controlled substances, which have been incorporated into national laws; however, national laws usually significantly expand on these international conventions.

Some precursor chemicals used to produce illegal drugs are also controlled substances in many countries, even though they may lack the pharmacological effects of the drugs themselves. Substances are classified according to schedules and consist primarily of potentially psychoactive substances.

2. How Does Molport Check Compound Orders for Controlled Substances?

Once an order is placed with Molport, all the compounds in the order are checked via the ChemAxon Compliance Checker which flags any controlled substances. Legislation covering controlled substances exists at local, national, and international levels, and varies widely in form and frequency of update, and the Compliance Checker ensures compliance in this rapidly changing legislation environment.

3. What Is the ChemAxon Compliance Checker?

The Compliance Checker relies on an updated, extensive controlled substances knowledge base derived from relevant published legislation (e.g. US Controlled Substance Act, UK Misuse of Drugs Act, United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, The Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade [PIC], and the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer). ChemAxon continuously monitors the legislative sources, and extracts new regulations and makes them available in the system as soon as possible.

The controlled substance regulations are represented as chemical query structures, and the structures in all Molport orders are passed to the Compliance Checker as SMILES strings and are checked against the controlled substance structures using ChemAxon's JChem chemical search engine. Compliance is checked against the controlled substance legislation in Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States.

Any matches are deemed to be controlled substances and are flagged accordingly. The Compliance Checker lists for each country where the compound was checked, its CAS Registry Number, DEA numbers, the law by which it is restricted, and legislative links. If a null flag is returned, it means that the compound is not restricted.

The information from the Compliance Checker presented to the end-user shows each compound's restriction status, and for each restricted compound provides a list of countries where it is restricted and the laws by which it is restricted.

4. What Are Molport's Rules on Orders for Controlled Substances?

Molport assesses all flagged compounds output from the Compliance Checker and applies the following rules to decide whether an ordered compound must be cancelled.

a. Any compound that is a controlled substance in the delivery country is cancelled. b. Any compound that is a controlled substance in any country involved in the customer's compound supply process is cancelled.

5. Why Have Some of My Compounds Been Cancelled after I Placed my Order?

Molport does not submit compounds to the Compliance Checker until the order has been placed, so any notification of a cancellation because a compound is flagged as a controlled substance has to occur after order placement. Molport informs customers of any such cancellations with details of the reasons for the cancellation.