SARMs Legal Status: What US Law, Australian Law, and International Sports Rules Actually Say

Key takeaways

No SARM is approved for human use anywhere

No selective androgen receptor modulator has been approved by any national medicines regulator for any medical use. The US Anti-Doping Agency states plainly that there are no Food and Drug Administration-approved SARMs currently available for prescription, and that SARMs are not approved for human use by any regulatory body worldwide. Because none has completed the approval process, all SARMs remain investigational compounds, and USADA notes explicitly that all SARMs are investigational drugs, so it is not legal for a doctor to prescribe one outside a clinical trial.

This absence of approval is not a technicality confined to one country. It means that anywhere a product containing a SARM is sold for human consumption, whether labeled as a dietary supplement, a 'research chemical,' or under a brand name, it is being sold outside the framework that any government uses to certify a drug as safe and effective for a given use.

United States: unscheduled but illegal to sell for human use

In the United States, SARMs are not currently listed as controlled substances under the Controlled Substances Act, which means simple possession for personal use is not itself a scheduled-drug offense the way possession of an anabolic steroid or a Schedule III substance would be. That gap has been the subject of repeated legislative attempts. The SARMs Control Act of 2018 (S. 2742) would have amended the Controlled Substances Act to add SARMs to Schedule III, the same schedule as anabolic steroids, and would have authorized the Drug Enforcement Administration to temporarily and permanently schedule new SARMs as they emerge. That bill was introduced in the 115th Congress but did not receive a vote before the session ended, and legislation not passed by the end of a Congress is cleared from the books. A nearly identical bill, the SARMs Control Act of 2019 (S. 2895), was reintroduced in the following Congress and met the same fate, having been introduced and referred to committee without ever coming to a vote. As of mid-2026, no successor bill has been enacted, so the scheduling gap between anabolic steroids and SARMs persists in federal law.

Although SARMs are not scheduled, selling them for human consumption is still illegal under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, because they do not meet the legal definition of a dietary supplement and have not been approved as drugs. The FDA has repeatedly used this authority. In 2017 the agency sent warning letters over products called 'The Officer' and 'The Lieutenant,' which were labeled as dietary supplements but contained ostarine (MK-2866) and LGD-4033, telling the distributor that life-threatening reactions, including liver toxicity, have occurred in people taking products containing SARMs, and that SARMs also have the potential to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. The agency has continued issuing warning letters since then; in one round of enforcement action, the FDA's Office of Compliance director said that body-building products containing SARMs are associated with serious safety concerns, including potential to increase the risk of heart attack or stroke and life threatening reactions like liver damage. The FDA has also pursued criminal actions against distributors of these products, not merely administrative warning letters.

The FDA's current consumer-facing guidance is unambiguous about the legal characterization of these products: although generally marketed as dietary supplements, they are not dietary supplements, but unapproved drugs that FDA has not reviewed for safety and effectiveness. The same guidance lists documented harms associated with SARM-containing products, including liver injury and acute liver failure, increased risk of heart attack or stroke, psychosis and hallucinations, sleep disturbances, sexual dysfunction, infertility, pregnancy miscarriage, and testicular shrinkage.

Australia: prescription-only status and criminal penalties

Australia treats SARMs more strictly than the United States. The Therapeutic Goods Administration has stated directly that all SARMs are prescription-only medicines in Australia, and unapproved SARM products that have not been assessed for quality, safety, or efficacy remain illegal to supply regardless of that prescription-only status. The TGA has also classified SARMs as 'Prohibited Imports' under the Customs (Prohibited Imports) Regulations 1956, meaning importation without specific authorization is a customs offense as well as a therapeutic goods offense.

Enforcement has followed from this classification. The TGA has executed search warrants against businesses and individuals suspected of importing, manufacturing, supplying, or advertising SARMs as unapproved therapeutic goods, and has stated that penalties for offenses under the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 can range from 12 months' imprisonment and/or 1,000 penalty units, up to 5 years' imprisonment and/or 4,000 penalty units, depending on the offense. Separately, the Australian Border Force has prosecuted individual importers under the Customs Act 1901; in one reported case a Western Australian man was fined more than $120,000 after pleading guilty to importing SARMs and human growth hormone, in addition to unlawful possession charges.

The TGA has also issued safety alerts after laboratory testing found that unapproved SARM products on the market were significantly underdosed relative to their labeling, reinforcing that consumers of illegally imported SARMs face both legal risk and a documented risk of receiving a mislabeled or substandard product.

International sport: banned at all times under the WADA Code

Every major anti-doping body applies the World Anti-Doping Agency's Prohibited List, which places selective androgen receptor modulators, including andarine, enobosarm (ostarine), LGD-4033 (ligandrol), RAD140, S-23, and YK-11, in section S1.2, 'Other Anabolic Agents.' All prohibited substances in that class, including all SARMs, are designated non-Specified Substances, a category that generally carries the most severe sanctions under the WADA Code because these substances are considered to have the highest potential for performance enhancement and the least legitimate justification for an athlete to have them in their system.

USADA describes the practical effect of this listing directly: all SARMs are prohibited at all times, both in and out of competition, for all athletes, from those competing at the highest level of sport to those competing recreationally. Because anti-doping rules operate on strict liability, the presence of a prohibited SARM in a sample is treated as a violation regardless of how it entered the athlete's system, which is part of why anti-doping bodies list SARMs as a recurring source of positive tests, including in cases attributed to contaminated supplements rather than deliberate use.

Where the picture is less clear

Public statements from medicines regulators outside the United States and Australia, including in Canada and the United Kingdom, describe SARMs in similar terms, as unauthorized substances not approved for human use. This overview does not independently verify the statutory detail or enforcement history in those jurisdictions to the same standard as the US and Australian material above, and readers relying on this article for legal decisions in another country should confirm the current rules with that country's own medicines regulator or a local lawyer rather than assume the US or Australian pattern applies identically elsewhere.

It is also worth being explicit about what current law does not establish. The fact that a substance is unscheduled at the US federal level, as SARMs currently are, is not the same as that substance being sanctioned, safe, or legal to sell, market, or use for bodybuilding or performance purposes. The FDA's enforcement pattern and Australia's prescription-only classification both show regulators treating human consumption of SARMs as an ongoing enforcement priority even in the absence of, or in addition to, controlled-substance scheduling.

Frequently asked

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