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.
It took a change of government to fix it. In April 2025, President José Raúl Mulino and Health Minister Federico Boyd repealed the Cortizo-era decree and replaced it with Executive Decree 6 of 4 April 2025. Pérez named three changes that mattered: the mandatory training course for doctors prescribing cannabis was scrapped, the closed list of qualifying conditions was dropped, and the technical requirements for granting licences were loosened. “The medical cannabis law provided for seven licences, but the decree regulating it was too rigid and didn’t allow progress,” he said. “With the modification in Decree 6 we updated those obstacles and licences started being granted.”
Decree 6 also created PNEUCAM, the national programme for the study and medical use of cannabis, which is the administrative home for everything that followed. Resolution 200 of September 2025 put cannabis on Panama’s controlled substances list, sitting alongside fentanyl, methadone and morphine. And in May 2026 the resolution approving patient registration forms and medical certifications went through, published in the Gaceta Oficial on 1 June.
If you’ve watched Germany work through the MedCanG, or Portugal’s early years with Infarmed, this will feel familiar. The law is the press release. The decrees are the market. And a badly written decree can hold things up longer than having no decree at all.
Seven companies. That’s the whole market.
This is the number worth remembering.
Law 242 provided for seven licences, and that ceiling was built into the selection process from the start. More than twenty companies expressed interest back in 2023. Seven made it through the evaluation commission.
The licence architecture is layered, and worth understanding before you model anything. As of November 2025, Pérez described three controlled-substances licences and five basic operating licences in force. By January 2026 he confirmed that seven commercialisation licences had been issued. One of those licensees opened its own dedicated pharmacy, which is how Canna Pharma came about. It’s tied to the Consorcio Panamericana de Cannabis, a consortium formed in February 2024. The others were expected to distribute through existing pharmacy chains instead.
So if you’re thinking about Panama, understand what you’re actually planning. You’re not applying for a licence. You’re negotiating with one of seven counterparties who already have one.
What just changed for pharmacies
On 26 July the drug directorate published Comunicado 019-DNFD-2026, and this is what triggered the recent round of coverage.
Any pharmacy or distributor that wants to handle cannabis derivatives classed as controlled substances now has to apply to modify its operating licence first. The official term is “increase of activity.” The reason given was simple: more and more companies were applying to get in. The directorate didn’t publish numbers to back that up, which is worth noting before anyone builds a growth curve on it.
The details are where it gets interesting. A pharmacy needs express authorisation from a licenciatario, meaning one of the seven, before it can put anything on the shelf. If the pharmacy already handles controlled substances, a notarised document proving that authorisation is enough. If it doesn’t, it also has to pass a technical inspection by the directorate. Prescriptions have to be kept on file for at least two years.
Read that again and you’ll see what it means. The seven licensees decide who gets to sell. The regulator built the channel, but it handed the gate to them.
Portugal to Panama, and why that matters to you
On 9 July, Tilray Medical announced the commercial launch of Tilray Oral Solution CBD100 in Panama. The product came out of its EU-GMP certified facility in Portugal, went in through a joint venture called Solana Life Group, and is being distributed through Farmacias Arrocha, one of the bigger pharmacy networks in the country.
No local cultivation. No local factory. No capital expenditure on the ground. Just a certificate, a partner and a dossier.
That’s the part I’d pay attention to. Tilray’s Portugal campus has been running this exact motion since 2019, when it made its first export to Germany. Now it’s pointing the same machinery at Latin America. For European producers with EU-GMP capacity and a German market that has stopped rewarding them for having it, this is the reference case. Your certification is worth more in Panama City than it is in Frankfurt right now.
CBD first, THC later. Plan for it.
Panama let CBD in ahead of THC, and that ordering is becoming standard across emerging markets.
Canna Pharma opened in an explicitly CBD-only phase. By February, the drug directorate had authorised 22 CBD products, including muscle gels and ointments. But it did this through registration exceptions, not full sanitary registrations, and the approved batches expire between December 2026 and January 2027.
That’s a regulator using a temporary tool to get something on shelves while it finishes building the permanent one. Useful to know if you’re modelling this market, because the current product list has a clock on it.
THC is the harder test. Both cannabis and THC remain under international narcotics control in Panama, which means tracking, pre-import permits and tighter registration. If you’re planning entry, assume your CBD product clears well ahead of your flower or full-spectrum extract, and budget accordingly.
The import window has a literal expiry date
This is the detail I’d put at the top of any Panama memo.
Law 242 permits domestic cultivation and export. In practice there’s no commercial-scale Panamanian production and no meaningful export volume on record. Seeds and seedlings are coordinated between the health ministry and the agriculture ministry, have to be grown in controlled greenhouses under strict security, and Pérez put the growing cycle at roughly ten months before harvest.
So every gram dispensed today is imported. But the import allowance isn’t open-ended. Licensees may import finished products for two years from the date their licence is approved, while they build out their own facilities. It’s a transition mechanism, not a permanent channel, and the clock started running separately for each licensee.
Most import windows in this industry close quietly, from the inside, when a domestic producer finally reaches GMP. Panama wrote the closing date into the law. If you want to supply this market, you’re not just competing on quality. You’re competing against a countdown that started when each of those seven licences was signed.
The part that doesn’t fit in a pitch deck
Panama is not a relaxed market. It’s a tightly controlled pharmaceutical one, and the regulator says so explicitly: the May 2026 resolution restates that non-therapeutic, non-scientific use remains illegal.
Patients have to register in a digital system called SIUCMAA, run by the health ministry, and submit a medical certification from a doctor recognised by the health council. The certification has to specify diagnosis, dose, frequency, duration, pharmaceutical form and route of administration, and it has to record which cannabinoid is being used. The official diagnosis list runs to more than twenty conditions, including epilepsy, cancer, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, chronic pain, HIV/AIDS and palliative care. There’s a formal role for authorised companions acting on behalf of minors and patients with disabilities.
Decree 6 also brought restrictions that rarely make it into the English coverage. Patients can’t consume medical cannabis in public spaces or at work without express employer authorisation, and use is barred for people in high-risk professions where it would interfere with essential duties.
And CBD has no wellness lane. It’s a medicine, prescription only, and it can’t be freely marketed or advertised to the public. The open-shelf CBD drinks, cosmetics and pet products that define the category in the US and half of Europe have no route into Panama.
So if you run a consumer CBD brand, Panama is closed to you. If you supply pharma-grade product, it’s open. That distinction isn’t a footnote. It’s the whole market.
What I’d watch over the next twelve months
The first THC registrations. CBD proved the import corridor works. THC proves the narcotics control side works, and that’s a bigger deal.
Whether those 22 exceptions become real registrations. The batches expire in early 2027. What happens then tells you whether this framework is finished or still improvising.
How many patients actually register. SIUCMAA is the number that matters, and nobody has published it. How many doctors are willing to certify is the other half of that question.
Who the other six licensees are. One opened a pharmacy. What have the rest built? Nobody has published a proper answer, and their two-year import clocks are ticking.
Whether the Canal argument is real. Panama is dollarised, has the Colón Free Zone, and sits on the logistics spine of the hemisphere. The regional hub thesis gets repeated constantly and has produced zero recorded exports so far. Treat it as a hypothesis, not a plan.
Three things to take away
Find a partner, seriously. Tilray went in with Solana Life Group, built together with a company that already knew how to distribute medical devices locally. Import licensing and pharmacy access in these markets run on relationships, not paperwork alone.
Your EU-GMP certificate travels better than you think. It’s doing more work in Latin America right now than it is in Germany, where it has become the price of entry rather than an advantage.
Sequence your products to the regulator’s nerves, not your margin. CBD opens the door. THC pays the rent. Leading with the second is how entries stall for years.
Panama will never be a big market. But it’s the first one in Central America that genuinely works, and in an industry where most frameworks stay on paper, that counts for something. Costa Rica passed its own law in March 2022 and only issued implementing regulations in February 2025, so the region now has two live frameworks and two very different case studies. Guatemala and Honduras are still watching. The Panama number their legislators will quote is three and a half years from law to first sale, and they’ll use it to argue both sides.
Sources: La Prensa (Panama), reporting by Aleida Samaniego C. and colleagues, 26 July 2026 and earlier coverage; La Estrella de Panamá; Panamá América; MINSA / Dirección Nacional de Farmacia y Drogas, Comunicado 019-DNFD-2026; Law 242 of 13 October 2021; Executive Decree 121 of 1 September 2022 (repealed); Executive Decree 6 of 4 April 2025; MINSA Resolution 200 of September 2025; the May 2026 patient registration resolution; Tilray Brands press release, 9 July 2026; StratCann; Cáñamo. This is market analysis, not legal advice. Check licence status and registration requirements with MINSA and Panamanian counsel before acting on any of it.
Editorial notes (not for publication)
Meta description (154 characters): Panama’s first cannabis pharmacy, new rules for pharmacies and Tilray’s shipment from Portugal. What Central America’s first working market means for EU exporters.
Shorter alternative (141 characters): Seven licences, one pharmacy, a two-year import window. Why Panama took three years to sell its first gram, and what it means for EU-GMP producers.
Tags: Panama, Latin America, EU-GMP, Tilray, market entry, medical cannabis, regulation, export, Central America
Alternative headlines:
- Portugal to Panama: Europe’s EU-GMP Capacity Just Found a New Buyer
- Seven Companies, One Small Country, and a Two-Year Clock
- The Import Window in Panama Has an Expiry Date Written Into It
Open verification items:
- Panamanian outlets cite the May 2026 patient resolution as both No. 0406 and No. 0416, same date, same content. La Estrella and Panamá América say 0406; La Prensa says 0416 and attributes it to the Dirección General de Salud Pública. Confirm the number against the Gaceta Oficial (30536 A, 1 June 2026) before citing it in print. The article currently avoids the number for that reason.
- Licence counts don’t reconcile cleanly across statements: three controlled-substances plus five basic operating licences in November 2025, seven commercialisation licences in January 2026. Different licence types, but worth a direct question to the DNFD.
- Decree 6 reportedly removed the closed list of qualifying conditions, yet the May 2026 resolution publishes a list of twenty-plus diagnoses. Worth clarifying what changed in practice.
Follow-ups worth a second piece: who the other six licensees are and what they’ve built; whether the registration exceptions convert before the batches expire in early 2027; when each licensee’s two-year import clock actually expires; whether the Colón Free Zone re-export idea has any basis in Law 242.
Interview candidates: Uriel Pérez (DNFD), Consorcio Panamericana de Cannabis, Solana Life Group, Carlos Ossa (patient advocate, has publicly criticised Decree 6).
Source warning: English-language coverage of Panama contains a widely copied error, a non-existent “Executive Decree 25 of January 2024.” The real chain is Decree 121/2022, repealed, then Decree 6/2025. Go to La Prensa, La Estrella and MINSA directly.
