Panama City.- The United States Ambassador to Panama, Kevin Marino Cabrera, stated this Friday that Washington “works every day” with the Panamanian government to remove the Central American nation from the list of “major illicit drug transit or production countries”.
“We are working with Panama every day to eliminate Panama being any kind of route. We are working with the government of President José Raúl Mulino (…) for five years in a row, Panama has been our number one partner in the region in drug seizures, and we are going to continue working together so that they can continue to be our number one partner. And that is what you are seeing from this expansion of cooperation together,” said the U.S. ambassador.
The U.S. Department of State released this year’s list on Wednesday, in which Panama appears alongside Venezuela, Afghanistan, Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Burma, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, and Peru.
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Panama is one of the two dozen countries that make up the Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition (A3C), a U.S. initiative framed within the so-called Shield of the Americas, officially presented last March by President Donald Trump.
Panama seized 129 tons of drugs and 47.8 tons of chemical precursors in 2025, according to statistics from the Public Ministry.
