Bringing personal medication into Bali: what BPOM actually allows

Adderall has no lawful way into Indonesia. Not with a prescription, not below some small quantity, not through the personal-use route BPOM publishes for every other medicine. Amphetamine and dextroamphetamine, the active ingredients of Adderall and Vyvanse, are named by chemical name in UU 35/2009's Golongan I narcotics schedule, the same schedule that holds cannabis and heroin. There is no route out of that, for a traveller or for anyone else.

Three regimes, not one ADHD ban

The market's ranking pages treat "ADHD medication" as a single banned category. It is not. Three different instruments govern three different substances, and which one applies decides whether a route exists at all.

UU 35/2009, Lampiran, Daftar Narkotika Golongan I, items 53 and 54:

53. AMFETAMINA : (±)-alfa-metilfenetilamina 54. DEKSAMFETAMINA : (+)-alfa-metilfenetilamina

Amphetamine and dextroamphetamine sit in Golongan I. Pasal 8 ayat (1) bans the whole group from health services:

Narkotika Golongan I dilarang digunakan untuk kepentingan pelayanan kesehatan.

Group I is barred from medical use inside Indonesia, full stop. Nothing in BPOM's personal-import scheme, read below, carves out an exception for narcotics of any kind, and its own directorate page states so directly. Permenkes No. 7 Tahun 2025, the narcotics schedule now in force, keeps amphetamine and dextroamphetamine at the same items 53 and 54 of Golongan I: the 2025 update expands the list to cover new synthetics, it does not move either substance.

Methylphenidate, the active ingredient in Ritalin and Concerta, is a different chemical under a different statute. Permenkes No. 6 Tahun 2025, the psychotropics schedule in force since 30 June 2025, Lampiran, Daftar Psikotropika Golongan II:

2. METILFENIDAT : Metil-alfa-fenil-2-piperidina asetat

Psychotropics fall under UU No. 5 Tahun 1997, not the narcotics law, and Golongan II psychotropics keep a real, narrow personal-import route (below). Two medicines treated for the same condition, two statutes, two outcomes: one closed, one open on conditions.

Ordinary prescription and over-the-counter medicine, the third regime, follows a quantity table set by BPOM rather than a controlled-substance schedule at all, covered in its own section below.

Codeine: the mildest schedule that still is not a way in

Codeine sits in Golongan III, the softest of the three narcotics schedules. UU 35/2009, Lampiran, Daftar Narkotika Golongan III, item 5:

5. Kodeina : 3-metil morfina

The market reads "mildest" as "manageable with paperwork." It is not. BPOM's own directorate page, the one that runs the personal-import scheme day to day, states the rule for narcotics without qualification:

6. Obat Narkotika Tidak diperbolehkan dibawa dari luar negeri.

Narcotic medicine is not permitted to be brought in from abroad. No golongan is exempted, no prescription changes the answer, and the same page repeats the prohibition for the postal channel. A codeine-based cough syrup bought over the counter at home is, for import purposes, in the same closed category as heroin: different penalties once inside Indonesia, the same answer at the border. Permenkes No. 7 Tahun 2025 keeps codeine at the same Golongan III item 5, unchanged from the 2009 original.

What an ordinary medicine may carry

Peraturan BPOM No. 27 Tahun 2022 Pasal 37 ayat (1) opens a personal-use route for medicine without Indonesian marketing authorisation, needing no approval from the Head of the Agency, only a notification form. Pasal 41 ayat (1) ties it to a prescription or hospital recommendation. The quantity itself was rewritten in 2023, and the table is worth quoting exactly because almost nobody has.

Peraturan BPOM No. 28 Tahun 2023, Lampiran III sits on a scanned page inside a 20-page PDF: the text layer is empty there, which is very likely why every blog repeats the figures without a citation. Read visually, the table for baggage reads:

Sediaan solid/padat: 30 pcs per orang untuk setiap jenis/item produk. Sediaan semisolid, liquid, aerosol: 3 pcs per orang untuk setiap jenis/item produk. Atau, sesuai dengan resep dokter untuk kebutuhan maksimal 90 Hari pengobatan.

Thirty pieces of tablets, capsules or similar solid dosage forms, per product, without a prescription. Three pieces of creams, syrups, suspensions or aerosols, per product, on the same basis. With a doctor's prescription, any dosage form, the limit becomes a 90-day supply. The table has no row for psychotropics or narcotics: those are excluded and governed separately, by the directorate page below.

Ritalin's route, and the number BPOM disagrees with itself on

BPOM's directorate page states the psychotropics rule in its own words:

5. Obat Psikotropika Hanya diperbolehkan bagi Warga Negara Asing, harus disertai resep dokter untuk kebutuhan maksimal 60 hari pengobatan.

Permitted only for foreign nationals, with a doctor's prescription, for a maximum of 60 days' treatment. The prescription has to come from a doctor treating the traveller in the medicine's country of origin, in English, not one written after arrival. Psychotropics cannot be posted at all: the same page requires them to be carried in person.

Here is the contradiction the page will not resolve by picking a side. DDTC News, a customs-beat outlet, reported on 5 October 2024 that BPOM's own @bpom_ri social media account gave the same limit as 90 hari, not 60. Neither Perka BPOM 27/2022 nor 28/2023 states a day-limit for psychotropics anywhere in the text: the figure appears only on BPOM's own outputs, and those outputs disagree with each other. This is not a competitor's error to correct. It is the regulator contradicting itself, and a page that silently picked the higher number would be gambling with someone's medicine cabinet. Plan around the lower, stricter figure, 60 days, and expect the conflict rather than a clean answer at the counter.

Documentation, and the tick-box that groups medicine with firearms

A prescription or hospital recommendation is the entry document for personal-use medicine above the OTC quantities in Lampiran III; a foreign prescription in English, from the treating doctor in the country of origin, is the entry document for psychotropics; nothing is an entry document for narcotics, because no document opens that route.

Indonesia's electronic arrival declaration, form BC 2.2, asks the question once, and it asks it oddly. Item 2 of the declared-goods list reads:

Narkotika, psikotropika, prekursor, obat-obatan, senjata api, senjata angin, senjata tajam, amunisi, bahan peledak, benda/publikasi pornografi.

Narcotics, psychotropics, precursors, medicines, firearms, air guns, sharp weapons, ammunition, explosives and pornographic material, one tick box. A traveller carrying entirely legal paracetamol answers the same customs question as a traveller carrying a firearm. The wording survived the arrival-card system's move to allindonesia.imigrasi.go.id in September 2025 unchanged.

The stakes are the drug law, not a customs fine

Mistaking the regime is not a paperwork error. A Golongan I narcotic carried across the border, Adderall included, falls under the import provisions of the same statute covered in what Indonesia's drug law means for a Bali holiday, where importing above threshold quantities carries penalties up to death. Most personal supplies sit well under those thresholds, and the statute's import article does not set a de minimis exception for a prescription bottle. Treat the golongan, not the dose, as the thing that decides which statute applies.

What we could not establish

• The statutory basis for the 60-day, foreign-nationals-only figure for
• psychotropics. Neither Perka BPOM 27/2022 nor 28/2023 states it; it
• appears only on BPOM's own directorate page, which disagrees with
• BPOM's own social media account.
• Whether pseudoephedrine and other pharmaceutical precursors carry any
• quantity limit for a traveller. BPOM's SAS and FAQ pages address only
• Obat, Psikotropika and Narkotika; precursors appear once, in the
• commercial-import chapter, and nowhere in the personal-use guidance.
• What happens at the actual customs counter at Ngurah Rai when a
• traveller ticks "yes" to the medicines line on arrival. No field report
• or Bea dan Cukai procedure page settles it.
• Real-world enforcement practice: how often the Lampiran III quantities
• are checked, and what happens to an undeclared but otherwise-legal
• medicine found in a bag. No official source publishes statistics on
• either.