Germany's parliament has approved legislation that will treat incapacitating drugs used to facilitate sexual assault or robbery in the same way as weapons, raising the minimum prison sentence for such offences from three to five years.

The change targets so-called knockout drops, known in German as K.o.-Tropfen, which are secretly slipped into drinks to leave victims unconscious and unable to resist. Under the new law, using these substances to commit rape or robbery will be treated as a particularly serious form of the offence. The bill received support from all parliamentary groups except the far-right Alternative for Germany, which abstained, arguing that the changes would not improve victim protection. The legislation must still complete the remaining formalities before the tougher penalties take effect.

The reform closes a gap in the law identified by Germany's Federal Court of Justice. In a ruling on 8 October 2024, the court held that secretly adding such substances to a drink did not amount to using a dangerous tool under Section 177(8) of the Criminal Code, so the five-year minimum sentence attached to that provision did not apply. The Bundesrat, Germany's upper house, introduced a bill to address the issue in May 2025, and the federal cabinet approved a government draft law on 13 May 2026, proposed by Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig.

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said: "We classify date rape drugs, which are increasingly used as a widespread tool in crimes, as weapons. This creates the basis for significantly stricter prosecutions." He added that women should feel safe and be able to move freely everywhere.

The scale of the problem is difficult to measure because knockout drops are not separately defined as an offence in the Criminal Code and therefore cannot be separately recorded in police crime statistics. A representative German study cited in Bundestag documents, known as LeSuBiA, surveyed about 15,000 people and found that 6.7 per cent of women and 3.7 per cent of men had experienced the involuntary administration of knockout drops during their lifetime. For the preceding five years, the figures were 1.8 per cent and 0.7 per cent respectively. The planned legal change would require a corresponding update to the statistics' offence categories so these cases can be counted.

Separate controls on the chemicals involved are already in force. An amendment to the New Psychoactive Substances Act that took effect on 12 April 2026 placed the industrial chemicals GBL and BDO, both used as knockout drops, under stricter controls.

The law comes after a Berlin court sentenced a 69-year-old man on 28 October 2026 to 12 years in prison, followed by preventive detention, after convicting him of 22 counts of rape and dangerous bodily harm. The court found he had sedated women by putting substances in their drinks and filmed some of the assaults at his Berlin apartment. The attacks prosecuted at trial took place between 2016 and 2022, and prosecutors estimate that up to 59 women in total may have been victims. The ruling is not yet final.

Reports of the parliamentary debate also mention longer limitation periods and new rules against verbal sexual harassment as part of the wider package. Campaigners have long argued that proving the use of knockout drops is difficult, especially when alcohol is involved, because the substances leave the body quickly and victims often have gaps in their memory. The new law does not remove that evidential challenge, but supporters say the tougher sentences send a clear signal about how seriously the courts should treat these crimes.