Queensland sorts dangerous drugs into two schedules, and which one your drug sits in is one of the first things that shapes your charge. It affects the maximum penalty, and for some offences it decides which court deals with you at all.

Most people have never heard of the schedules until they are already charged, and the assumption they arrive with, that schedule 2 means minor, is wrong in ways that matter.

What is in schedule 1

Legal Aid Queensland describes schedule 1 as the more serious group, attracting the most significant penalties, and lists it as including amphetamine, cocaine, heroin, lysergide which is LSD, methylamphetamine, MDMA which is the active ingredient in ecstasy, paramethoxyamphetamine and phencyclidine.

It is a short list of specific substances.

What is in schedule 2

Everything else. Legal Aid Queensland describes schedule 2 as covering all other illicit drugs, and the examples it gives are worth reading properly, because several of them catch people by surprise.

Cannabis. Methadone and morphine. Gamma hydroxybutyric acid, known as GHB. Diazepam, which most people know as Valium, and temazepam. Synthetic cannabinoids. And all anabolic and androgenic steroids.

Two things stand out from that list.

Steroids are drugs for these purposes. People who would never describe themselves as involved with drugs are charged over steroids every year, and are genuinely shocked to find they are dealing with the Drugs Misuse Act rather than something administrative.

Some prescription medications appear there. Holding someone else's medication, without lawful authority to have it, can be a drug charge rather than a technicality. That is worth knowing before you carry a friend's tablets home for them.

Schedule 2 does not mean minor

This is the misconception worth killing.

Schedule 2 is not a lesser tier of trivial substances. It is the residual category, and it contains cannabis, which produces a very large share of Queensland drug charges, alongside substances that attract serious treatment.

The maximums in schedule 2 are not small. Legal Aid Queensland records producing a dangerous drug as carrying up to 25 years for a schedule 1 drug and up to 20 years for a schedule 2 drug. That is a real gap, and 20 years is not a lenient number.

As always, those figures are ceilings for the very worst version of an offence committed by the very worst offender. They are not forecasts and nobody can tell you what your own matter will produce.

Where the schedule changes which court deals with you

This is the practical consequence, and it is the one worth focusing on.

Legal Aid Queensland describes the general position that offences carrying up to 15 years can be dealt with summarily, meaning by a magistrate, and that a magistrate dealing with a matter that way is limited to 3 years.

The schedule then cuts into that.

For supply, Legal Aid Queensland's material indicates that supply of a schedule 2 drug without an aggravating circumstance can be dealt with summarily at the prosecutor's election, while supply of a schedule 1 drug cannot.

So two people charged with supply, one involving cannabis and one involving methylamphetamine, are not in the same procedural position at all. One may stay in front of a magistrate with a three year ceiling. The other is going upstairs where no such ceiling applies. Our page on drug supply covers where those charges sit.

Quantity sits on top of the schedule

The schedule is not the only variable. Quantity thresholds are set drug by drug, and where your amount falls against them affects the maximum and, for some offences, whether a magistrate can deal with it.

Legal Aid Queensland gives one concrete example on the cannabis side: a cultivation matter cannot be dealt with summarily where the aggregate weight of the plants reaches 500 grams or the number of plants exceeds 100.

The thresholds differ from drug to drug and they are not intuitive. Do not assume a figure you read about one substance applies to another, and do not assume a figure you read in an article written for another state applies here at all.

Then there is what was found alongside it

Charges in this area arrive in bundles, and the maximums within the bundle vary enormously.

Legal Aid Queensland describes possessing a thing for use in connection with a drug crime, or that has been used for one, as carrying up to 15 years. Possessing something for actually administering, consuming or smoking a drug carries up to 2 years. And there is a separate offence for unlawful possession of prohibited combinations of items, carrying up to 25 years, which cannot be dealt with summarily at all.

Fifteen years and two years for objects found in the same drawer. Which category a particular item falls into depends on the surrounding circumstances rather than the object itself, and that is frequently worth contesting.

What this means for you in practice

Find out which schedule your drug is in and what quantity is alleged. Those two facts, together, tell you more about the shape of your matter than anything else at this stage.

Then find out whether a commercial purpose is alleged anywhere on the charge sheet, because that removes the summary option regardless.

And read the whole charge sheet rather than the first line. People describe themselves as charged with possession when there are three offences listed with maximums ranging from 2 years to 15.

Our page on drug possession covers what the prosecution actually has to prove on a possession charge.

This article is current as at August 2026. Queensland drug law is in a period of change, including the diversion framework, so check the current position rather than relying on an article.

If you have been charged in Cairns

The schedule and the quantity are settled facts by the time you are charged, but what the prosecution says they mean is not. Whether an amount supports a commercial purpose allegation, and which of the surrounding items were for use in a drug crime as opposed to personal use, are genuine questions with real consequences for where your matter is heard.

We act in drug offences matters at Cairns Magistrates Court and beyond. We can go through what you are actually facing before your first mention.

If you have been charged with a drug offence in Cairns and you are not sure what you are facing, speak with us before your first mention.