Are the chemicals used for anesthesia haram ?


On the issue of ethyl alcohol, then it is not an intoxicant bit rather a poison. Therefore, it does not fall under the ruling of intoxicants as Shaikh Al-Albani rahimahullah mentions below:

Question :

My Shaikh, there are two types of alcohol as the specialists say: Methal Alcohol and Ethyl Alcohol. One of them is an intoxicant and the other is a poison. Is a little poison that kills considered haram?

Answer :

If the affair is as you reported with an authentic chain, then they are not the same because there is a difference between an intoxicant and a non-intoxicant. Our speech is about alcohol, which intoxicates. If it is another type which I did not memorize its name yet, it is a poison and not an intoxicant, so if it does not enter into what we presented now. For example, there is an affair as you know better than us classified in the category of the anesthetics and was arranged in intoxicants. So the anesthetics do not tread the course of the intoxicants and it is not treated with the treatment of intoxicants because we have a hadith on the intoxicants:

مَا أَسْكَرَ كَثِيرُهُ فَقَلِيلُهُ حَرَامٌ

Whatever causes intoxication in large amounts, a small amount of it is (also) unlawful

[Reported in Sunan Abu Dawood and graded as Hasan Saheeh by Al-Albani in Saheeh Sunan Abi Dawood no. 3681]

We do not have about anesthetics something like this text, i.e., what intoxicates in large amounts then a small amount is haram. We do not have anything in this at all, verily we are only capable of saying whatever harms from these anesthetics is haram relying on the statement of the Prophet sallahu alayhi wa salam:

لاَ ضَرَرَ وَلاَ ضِرَارَ

There should be neither harming nor reciprocating harm

So like that, it is obligatory that we differentiate between an anesthetic and an intoxicant and we give each of them their befitting ruling…”

Answered by : Shaikh Al-Albani rahimahullah