On social media, an image on the alleged enactment of Law 14 of May 19, 2016 is circulating, which regulates the activities and use of controlled substances for medical and scientific purposes and in which allegedly the use of medicinal marijuana is approved in Panama.

With the Panama Papers' revelations of transnational financial skulduggery now burning up the Internet, Bernie Sanders' many fans have started passing around a video of a fairly prescient speech the presidential candidate delivered back in 2011. At the time, the U.S. was considering a free trade agreement with the charming Latin America tax haven, supported by President Obama and his then–secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. But progressive activists argued that the deal would only make it harder for the U.S. government to deal with bank secrecy and tax avoidance. Sanders brought those concerns to the Senate floor:

On June 12, crew members of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Vigilant offloaded 3,100 pounds of marijuana seized from a go-fast boat intercepted in the Caribbean Sea.

The story on how Coast Guard personnel seized the marijuana in late May in waters between Panama and the Colombian island of San Andrés emerged last week in Miami federal court records.

According to a criminal complaint filed by a special agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the action unfolded May 27 when a go-fast vessel was spotted traveling in international waters about 100 miles south of San Andrés Island, a Colombian possession east of Nicaragua and north of Panama.

The debate of whether or not to legalize marijuana in the U.S. is not just a national one, Latin American leaders are weighing in on it too.

That’s because U.S. marijuana consumption drives drug violence in their countries.  Armed Honduran military police escort us to the most dangerous neighborhood in San Pedro Sula, a city dubbed the “murder capital of the world.”

The gang comes in and charges every resident a war tax they call it, it’s simply extortion.  Painful choices for residents: Pay the phony tax, leave or face the wrath of the gangs.

Similar fears haunt communities in other Latin American countries also plagued by violent criminal gangs, whose power is connected to the drug trade.