MDMB-FUBINACA.

MDMB-FUBINACA is a synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonist (SCRA) of the indazole-3-carboxamide family, with no structural kinship with hemp cannabinoids. It binds to the human CB1 and CB2 receptors with an affinity of the order of a nanomolar or below, at least ten times higher than that of delta-9-THC, and behaves in signalling assays as a full agonist where delta-9-THC is only a partial agonist. This combination of potency and maximal efficacy is associated with severe poisonings, without any original pharmacology explaining it. In mice it substitutes for delta-9-THC in stimulus discrimination, which suggests cannabis-like subjective effects; its median effective dose on locomotor activity is about two hundred times lower than that of THC. What the literature does not establish matters just as much: no controlled clinical study exists, human pharmacokinetic data are lacking, the sources consulted report no activity at TRPV1, GPR55, PPAR-gamma or 5-HT1A, and the World Health Organization found no formal toxicology study. No therapeutic use is recognised.

Source

No natural occurrence: MDMB-FUBINACA is a synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonist produced in clandestine laboratories. It circulates sprayed onto dried plant material sold as smoking mixtures, or dissolved in e-cigarette liquids whose composition is not declared (WHO 2025). It appeared on the illicit market in 2014 in the Russian Federation and has since been detected in at least nineteen countries; national regulations adopted from 2015 to 2020 reduced detections, but the WHO notes that they have risen again recently.

No biological pathway. MDMB-FUBINACA does not exist in living things and has never been isolated from a plant: it is obtained entirely by organic synthesis, described here only by its chemical class, the indazole-3-carboxamides. This skeleton belongs to a family described by the Pfizer patent WO 2009/106982 (“Indazole derivatives”), later diverted to the illicit market.

European Union

MDMB-FUBINACA has been monitored by the European Union's early warning system; its presence in Europe triggered a public health alert from the European drugs monitoring centre in 2016. It is not among the substances named in the annex of Framework Decision 2004/757/JHA as supplemented by Directives (EU) 2017/2103, 2019/369, 2020/1687, 2021/802, 2022/1326 and 2025/2062, and the WHO describes it as illegal in most Member States of the Union. The international framework changed in 2026: on the recommendation of the WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence meeting in Geneva from 20 to 22 October 2025, the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs placed MDMB-FUBINACA in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention on psychotropic substances at its 69th session (9-13 March 2026), which requires national control by the parties. In the United States, the substance was temporarily placed in Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act in 2017, then placed in Schedule 1 in 2020.

France

A substance scheduled as a narcotic. MDMB-FUBINACA is named explicitly in annex IV of the decree of 22 February 1990 fixing the list of substances classified as narcotics, in the consolidated list of ANSM (updated 16 February 2026), under the entry “MDMB-FUBINACA or MDMB (N)-Bz-F or FUB-MDMB or methyl (2S)-2-{[1-[(4-fluorophenyl) methyl] indazole-3-carbonyl] amino}-3,3-dimethylbutanoate”, among the examples given after the definition of the family of indazole-3-carboxamide derivatives. The block of synthetic cannabinoids to which this entry belongs is tied in the list to several decrees (24 February 2009, 19 May 2015, 31 March 2017, 3 October 2017 and 14 October 2019), without the list saying which one scheduled this molecule. That list predates the molecule's placement in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention (Commission on Narcotic Drugs, March 2026). Production, possession, transfer and use are prohibited and criminally punishable; no legal CBD product may contain it.

Sources: EUR-Lex, UNODC, CND, ANSM, IUPHAR/BPS, ChEBI, EUDA. Our method.

Family

Synthetic CB receptor agonist › New psychoactive substance

Class

indazole-3-carboxamide

Verification

Classification, sources and binding values checked on 20 October 2026; text read against its sources and Wikipedia.

Wikipedia (English)

MDMB-FUBINACA (new tab)

Article paired by the molecule's structure (InChIKey), revision read on 19 October 2026. Read as a second opinion, never cited as a source.

1. 1WHO, Expert Committee on Drug Dependence, 48th meeting (Geneva, 20-22 October 2025): critical review report on MDMB-FUBINACA (item 3.2.1) (new tab)
2. 2WHO, press release of 23 April 2026: the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, at its 69th session (9-13 March 2026), places MDMB-FUBINACA in Schedule II of the 1971 Convention (new tab)
3. 3Gamage et al., Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, 2018: molecular and behavioural characterisation of the synthetic cannabinoids MMB- and MDMB-FUBINACA, MN-18, NNEI, CUMYL-PICA and 5F-CUMYL-PICA (new tab)PMID 29549157
4. 4Banister et al., ACS Chemical Neuroscience, 2016: pharmacology of valinate and tert-leucinate synthetic cannabinoids, including MDMB-FUBINACA (in vitro membrane potential, telemetry in rats) (new tab)PMID 27421060
5. 5Kevin et al., Forensic Toxicology, 2019: formation of thermal degradants and cyanide from carboxamide-type synthetic cannabinoids, including MDMB-FUBINACA (new tab)PMID 30705707
6. 6Krishna Kumar et al., Cell, 2019: structure of the cannabinoid CB1 receptor - G protein complex bound to MDMB-FUBINACA (new tab)PMID 30639101
7. 7ANSM, consolidated list of substances classified as narcotics, updated 16 February 2026: MDMB-FUBINACA listed by name in annex IV (family of 3-carboxamide indazole derivatives) (new tab)
8. 8PubChem, MDMB-FUBINACA, CID 119025665 (new tab)

SMILES

CC(C)(C)[C@@H](C(=O)OC)NC(=O)C1=NN(C2=CC=CC=C21)CC3=CC=C(C=C3)F

Machine-readable entry (JSON)

LLM ingestion format: a structured superset of the entry (identifiers, binding, versioned legal status). Full corpus.