What is a narcotic?

A narcotic, in United States law, is a drug that falls into one of a short list of categories: opium and the opiates made from it, poppy straw, coca leaves, and cocaine. In ordinary conversation the word usually means a prescription opioid painkiller, and sometimes it means any illegal drug at all. Those uses overlap only in part, which is why the same drug can be a narcotic in one sentence and not in another.

How does US law define a narcotic drug?

The definition sits in the Controlled Substances Act, at 21 U.S.C. 802(17). It has a lead-in and six parts, (A) to (F). Paragraph (A) covers opium, opiates and their derivatives, and adds that the term does not include the isoquinoline alkaloids of opium. Paragraph (B) covers poppy straw and concentrate of poppy straw. Paragraph (C) covers coca leaves, with an exception for coca leaves and extracts of coca leaves from which cocaine, ecgonine and derivatives of ecgonine or their salts have been removed. Paragraph (D) covers cocaine and its salts and isomers. Paragraph (E) covers ecgonine and its derivatives, their salts and isomers. Paragraph (F) covers any compound, mixture or preparation that contains any quantity of the substances in paragraphs (A) through (E). The lead-in, in the 2024 edition of the Code published by the Government Publishing Office on govinfo, reads:

The term "narcotic drug" means any of the following whether produced directly or indirectly by extraction from substances of vegetable origin, or independently by means of chemical synthesis, or by a combination of extraction and chemical synthesis:

The lead-in applies to every paragraph that follows, so the substances count whether they come from a plant or from a laboratory. That detail matters for the DEA list, because a drug flagged as a narcotic there does not have to come from a poppy.

Is cocaine a narcotic?

Legally, yes. Paragraphs (C), (D) and (E) of the definition put coca leaves, cocaine and ecgonine inside the term, so cocaine is a narcotic drug under the Controlled Substances Act even though it is a stimulant. The DEA list agrees. Its entry for cocaine reads code 9041, Schedule II, NARC flag Y. This is the clearest example of the gap between the legal term and the everyday one. A person who says "narcotic" and means "opioid" is describing a smaller group than the statute does, and a person who says "narcotic" and means "any illegal drug" is describing a larger one.

What does the NARC column in the DEA list mean?

The DEA publishes a list titled "Controlled Substances - Alphabetical Order", dated August 27, 2026 in the copy we used. Its columns are the substance name, the Controlled Substance Code Number (CSCN), the schedule, a column headed NARC (the PDF abbreviates it as "Narcotic"), and other names. The NARC column holds a Y or an N. The PDF gives no further explanation of the flag, so we report it as printed and do not guess at the reasoning behind any single entry.

A few entries show the range:

• Fentanyl, code 9801, Schedule II, NARC Y.
• Cocaine, code 9041, Schedule II, NARC Y.
• Morphine, code 9300, Schedule II, NARC Y.
• Tramadol, code 9752, Schedule IV, NARC Y.
• Buprenorphine, code 9064, Schedule III, NARC Y.
• Ketamine, code 7285, Schedule III, NARC N.

Two points follow from this. First, the NARC flag is independent of the schedule number: a Schedule IV drug such as tramadol and a Schedule II drug such as fentanyl both carry a Y. Second, a drug can sit in a high schedule and still carry an N, as amphetamine does in Schedule II. For what the schedules themselves mean, see DEA drug schedules I to V.

Does the flag change how a prescription works?

The federal prescription rules we checked turn on the schedule, not on the NARC flag. Under 21 CFR 1306.12, refilling a prescription for a Schedule II controlled substance is prohibited. Under 21 CFR 1306.22, a Schedule III or IV prescription cannot be filled or refilled more than six months after it was issued, and cannot be refilled more than five times. So a Schedule II narcotic such as fentanyl and a Schedule IV narcotic such as tramadol follow different refill rules, even though both carry the Y. Some states add their own limits, and the state board of pharmacy is the authority for those.

What do people mean by "narcotic" in everyday speech?

Most of the time they mean opioid pain medicine. NIDA describes opioids as "a class of natural, semi-synthetic, and synthetic drugs" that includes prescription medications for pain and illegal drugs such as heroin. That is a pharmacological class, and it has its own page on this site: what is an opioid. Some people also use "narcotic" as a general word for illegal drugs, and news reports and older laws sometimes do the same. That loose usage has no basis in the definition above.

Three groups of drugs are easy to confuse:

• Drugs that are narcotics in the legal sense and opioids in the pharmacological sense, such as morphine and fentanyl.
• A drug that is a narcotic in the legal sense but a stimulant, which in the statute means cocaine and coca leaf.
• Drugs that are neither, including benzodiazepines, amphetamine and ketamine. The DEA list marks these N.

The United Kingdom does not present the idea in the same way. The Home Office list of commonly encountered controlled drugs has columns for the drug, its class under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and its schedule under the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001. It has no narcotic column. For the UK system see UK drug classes.

Which of the 18 drugs on this site are flagged as narcotics?

The table below uses the DEA list dated August 27, 2026 and the Home Office list updated April 1, 2025. "Not controlled" means the drug does not appear on the DEA list. The Home Office list covers only the most commonly encountered controlled drugs, so "not on the list" in the UK column means the drug does not appear on that list.

Three drugs carry a Y: tramadol, fentanyl and buprenorphine. All three are described as opioids on their labels, and the guide on opioids sets out the wording. Gabapentin is the one that surprises people. It is not a controlled substance federally, so it has no narcotic flag, although it is a Class C drug in the UK. The gabapentin page covers that split.

Is meloxicam a narcotic? Is tizanidine?

Neither is a narcotic. Neither drug appears anywhere in the DEA list dated August 27, 2026; we searched the full text of the file for both names. MedlinePlus says meloxicam "is in a class of medications called nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)", and says tizanidine "is in a class of medications called skeletal muscle relaxants". Neither belongs to the opium family or to coca, so neither falls under 21 U.S.C. 802(17). Because these two have no page of their own on this site, this paragraph is the whole answer.

Are gabapentin and tramadol narcotics?

For tramadol the DEA list says yes: the NARC column holds a Y beside code 9752, Schedule IV. The tramadol label also calls it "an opioid agonist and inhibitor of norepinephrine and serotonin re-uptake". Gabapentin is different. It is not on the DEA list, and its Neurontin label states that gabapentin "does not exhibit affinity for benzodiazepine, opioid (mu, delta or kappa), or cannabinoid 1 receptor sites." The same label says gabapentin is not a controlled substance. So the answer is yes for tramadol and no for gabapentin, on the evidence of the two official documents. The page on tramadol has the schedule details.

Where to check a specific drug

If a drug is not in the table, the DEA list is the place to look for the US, and the Home Office list for the UK. Both are linked in the sources below. For the wider picture of how drugs get onto these lists, read what is a controlled substance. Questions about a particular prescription belong with the prescriber or pharmacist, since this page describes legal categories and does not give medical advice.

Questions readers ask