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Central America’s first medical cannabis law passed in 2021. The first legal sale happened in January 2026. What went wrong in between is more useful than the milestone itself, especially if you’re sitting on EU-GMP capacity and wondering where to point it.

By Falk Altenhöfer

I almost wrote this article from the English-language coverage. Good thing I didn’t, because a lot of it is wrong. More on that at the end.

Here’s the short version. Panama passed Law 242 on 13 October 2021 and became the first country in Central America to legalise medical cannabis, five months ahead of Costa Rica. The National Assembly voted unanimously. And then, for more than three years, nothing. No licences, no products, no patients.

That changed this year. In January, a pharmacy called Canna Pharma opened in Bella Vista, Panama City, selling nothing but cannabis products. In July, Tilray shipped its first product into the country from Portugal. Panama has a working market now. Small, tightly controlled, but working.

The interesting part isn’t that it happened. It’s why it took so long, and who benefits now that it has.

The decree that broke its own law

Most people assume slow implementation means lazy bureaucrats. In Panama it was more specific than that, and more instructive.

Executive Decree 121 of September 2022 was meant to make Law 242 workable. Instead it made it impossible. Uriel Pérez, who runs the National Directorate of Pharmacy and Drugs at the health ministry, explained the problem plainly: the decree demanded more than the law did. Article 24 of Law 242 let companies import finished products during the first two years, precisely so patients wouldn’t have to wait for domestic cultivation. But Article 109 of the decree required good manufacturing practice conditions. Companies that had no factory yet couldn’t meet that. So the bridge that was supposed to carry the market until local production existed was regulated as though local production already existed.

“It was a matter of contradictions in the requirements,” as Pérez put it. Three years of stalled market, in one sentence.

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Panama Finally Sells Cannabis. It Took Four Years and One Very Bad Decree.