SUBJECT: Presidential Determination on Major Drug Transit
or Major Illicit Drug Producing Countries for
Fiscal Year 2021
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 706(1) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2003 (Public Law 107-228) (FRAA), I hereby identify the following countries as major drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries: Afghanistan, The Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela.
A country's presence on the foregoing list is not necessarily a reflection of its government's counternarcotics efforts or level of cooperation with the United States. Consistent with the statutory definition of a major drug transit or major illicit drug producing country set forth in section 481(e)(2) and (5) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended (Public Law 87-195) (FAA), the reason countries are placed on the list is the combination of geographic, commercial, and economic factors that allow drugs to transit or be produced, even if a government has engaged in robust and diligent narcotics control measures.
Illicit drugs inflict enormous harm on the health and safety of the American people and threaten the national security of the United States. While my Administration has achieved steady progress in stemming the tide of our country's drug epidemic, transnational criminal organizations continually challenge our success by violating our borders and flooding our homeland with these deadly substances.
The United States is taking the fight to these criminal organizations and their enablers on an unprecedented scale. This April, I initiated the most significant counternarcotic operations in decades targeting the illicit drug trade in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific by deploying U.S. military assets to U.S. Southern Command in cooperation with 22 international allies. These operations led to the seizure of more than 80 metric tons of cocaine and other dangerous drugs, depriving transnational criminal organizations of more than $1.8 billion in profits and putting drug kingpins on notice that they are squarely in the crosshairs of the United States.
