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Is Melatonin legal in Denmark?

Formal status

There is no EU-harmonised rule on melatonin in food supplements. It is governed nationally, and member states differ widely - from open sale at several milligrams to prescription-only status.

Denmark treats melatonin as a medicinal substance. The medicines agency has stated that melatonin is normally found in prescription medicines and may not be added to food supplements. The national guidance on food supplements, issued in June 2024, provides that food supplements may not contain substances or ingredients falling under the medicines act, and adds that a product marketed abroad as a food supplement may be a medicine in Denmark, classified on a concrete assessment of its ingredients or its presentation.

Denmark publishes no numeric melatonin threshold. Unlike Spain, Portugal or Finland, which set figures a supplement may sit beneath, Denmark provides no supplement route at any dose. The bar is categorical rather than quantitative.

It has been applied to ordinary supplements. Two melatonin food supplements sold by companies established outside Denmark, one in the United States and one in Poland, have been classified as unauthorised medicinal products and placed on the agency's published list of medicines illegal to sell in Denmark. Both were classified on the function limb of the medicines definition, meaning the classification followed from the substance's pharmacological effect rather than from anything claimed on the label.

Do we sell here?

Yes, for now: Sleep spray, Sleep capsules.

Yes, we ship to Denmark.

We should be clear about what Denmark's rule is, because it differs from most of Europe. Several countries set a milligram limit below which melatonin is a food supplement - 1 mg in Portugal, around 2 mg in Spain and Finland - and our 1 mg dose sits inside those. Denmark sets no figure at all, because it treats melatonin as a medicinal substance rather than as a supplement ingredient, whatever the dose.

What we weighed is that Denmark's action in this area has consisted of publishing classification decisions rather than measures against sellers based elsewhere in Europe, and that melatonin supplements from other European countries remain openly available to Danish customers, in some cases at higher doses than ours.

That is a real regulatory gap rather than a resolved question, and we would rather set it out than leave it implied. We review Denmark weekly.

Outlook

Denmark maintains and updates its list of products classified as unauthorised medicines, and melatonin supplements already appear on it. Further additions are the most likely development.

The more interesting tension is that melatonin food supplements are openly on sale to Danish consumers from European cross-border sellers at doses above ours, at the same time as the agency lists such products as unlawful medicines. That gap between the formal position and the market has been open for years. If it closes, it will close through the agency taking a step it has not yet taken against a seller outside Denmark.

Timeline

June 2024

The national guidance on food supplements, VEJ nr 9488 af 28/06/2024, restates that food supplements may not contain substances or ingredients falling under the medicines act, and that a product marketed abroad as a food supplement may be a medicine in Denmark, classified on a concrete assessment of its ingredients or presentation.

Retsinformation, VEJ nr 9488 af 28/06/2024

Ingredients

Browse legality of our other ingredients in Denmark.