Once a year the President has to tell Congress which countries are the world's drug producers and transit routes, and which of them have stopped trying. The list matters because the second half of it — the countries found to have "failed demonstrably" — is the trigger for withholding foreign assistance, unless the President separately decides the assistance is vital anyway.
This year's determination was signed on September 11 and published on September 18. It runs eight pages. Four of them are pictures.
What the document says
Twenty-three countries are named as major drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries:
Afghanistan, The Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Burma, the People's Republic of China (PRC), Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela.
Being on that list is explicitly not an accusation. The determination says so itself: presence "is not necessarily a reflection of its government's counterdrug efforts or level of cooperation with the United States," because the list is built from "the combination of geographic, commercial, and economic factors that allow drugs or precursor chemicals to be transited or produced."
The accusation is the next paragraph. Four countries — Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burma and Colombia — are designated as having failed demonstrably "to make substantial efforts to adhere to their obligations under international counternarcotics agreements."
Then the exception. Three of those four get a waiver: assistance to Bolivia, Burma and Colombia "is vital to the national interests of the United States." Afghanistan is not in that sentence, and it is the only one of the four whose justification memorandum contains no waiver paragraph.
The part a machine can read has no numbers in it
The signed text runs several hundred words on results. None of them are measured.
- "seizures of fentanyl and other drugs being smuggled into the United States have been reduced by more than half, and drug overdose deaths have plunged" — no baseline, no comparison year, no agency named.
- "saved tens of thousands of American lives"
- "captured and killed hundreds of the most vicious narcoterrorists"
- "seizing billions of dollars of illicit cartel finances"
- "an alliance with over a dozen countries"
There is no table, no citation and no source for any of it.
The part with the numbers is a picture
Section 706 of the 2003 Foreign Relations Authorization Act does not just require the designation. It requires the President to send Congress a memorandum of justification for each country designated, and the determination confirms four were included.
Those four memoranda are printed at pages 59691 to 59694. In the Federal Register's text version, each page reads in its entirety:
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]
The PDF has no text layer for them either. They are scans. You cannot search them, copy from them, quote them by machine, or run any automated check against them. Read as images, they contain the only hard figures in the document:
- Bolivia — coca cultivation increased "by approximately 10 percent, to 34,000 hectares between 2023 and 2024," and Bolivia "remains the third largest source of cocaine in the world according to UNODC."
- Burma — opium poppy cultivation "increased by 17 percent in 2025 according to UNODC, from 45,200 hectares in 2024 to approximately 53,100 hectares in 2025, reaching the highest level recorded in a decade," and Burma "remains the world's largest opium producer, accounting for roughly half of global supply."
- Colombia — coca cultivation "increased by 3 percent, reaching 261,000 hectares in 2024, up from 253,000 hectares in 2023," with "only 8,051 hectares eradicated in 2025, following 9,403 hectares the year before."
- Afghanistan — nothing. Its justification carries no hectare figure, no seizure figure, no percentage and no year-over-year comparison. Its evidence is "Reports from neighboring countries indicate," "Credible sources have assessed," and a UNODC characterisation of trafficking routes with no quantity attached.
Afghanistan is the one country of the four denied a waiver, and it is the one with no numbers behind the finding.
Who came off the list, and why
Venezuela is on the list of 23 and is not among the four decertified. The document's own wording establishes that this is a change — it says Venezuela "should no longer be designated" — and it gives the reason directly:
Given the positive steps taken under interim President Deley Rodriguez, I have determined Venezuela should no longer be designated as having failed demonstrably to fulfill its drug control commitments.
Venezuela stays on the 23-country Majors List. Only the failure finding is lifted. Two paragraphs later the document says it is "once again designating Burma and Afghanistan," which is the only other statement it makes about how this year's designations compare with last year's.
Two countries criticised at length, neither listed
The determination spends a paragraph on Canada — "Fentanyl continues to be illicitly produced in clandestine Canadian labs, and precursor chemicals and synthetic drugs continue to enter the United States through Canada" — and a paragraph on Brazil, whose government "has failed to confront the designated foreign terrorist organizations Primeiro Comando da Capital and Comando Vermelho, which have transformed Brazil into a hub for global cocaine flows."
Neither Canada nor Brazil appears on the list of 23. The document does not explain why criticism at that level carries no designation.
Nicaragua is on the list and is criticised — the "illegitimate Ortego-Murillo regime in Nicaragua has failed to take sufficient action against drug trafficking" — but is not among the four decertified. No reason is given. (The spelling is the document's own; it is printed here as published.)
What the determination does not say
- What decertification costs. The document never states what withholding follows from a "failed demonstrably" finding, and never cites section 490 of the Foreign Assistance Act, which is the provision that withholds assistance and directs U.S. opposition to multilateral development bank loans. The only hint is in the justification memorandum's own framing: the report is required "if he intends to waive related foreign assistance restrictions."
- How much money is at stake. Not one dollar figure appears anywhere — not for assistance withheld from Afghanistan, not for assistance preserved in Bolivia, Burma or Colombia.
- What the standard is. No threshold, criterion or methodology is given for what counts as failing demonstrably. Bolivia's coca rose 10 percent and it was decertified. Colombia's rose 3 percent and it was decertified. Mexico and the PRC are criticised in the body and were not.
- What would change the finding. Two countries are told progress will be considered, with no metric attached. For Bolivia: "If Bolivia can demonstrate progress in reducing illicit drug production in the coming year... I will consider revisiting its status." For Colombia: "If, as expected, Colombia makes progress on aggressive coca eradication and dismantling its narcoterrorist networks over the coming year, I will consider lifting the country's 'failed demonstrably' status."
The determination closes by directing the Secretary of State to submit it "with the accompanying memoranda of justification" to Congress and to publish it in the Federal Register. Both were done. One of the two audiences got a searchable document.