Cuba is not a producer, transit point, nor destination for narcotics, therefore, the presence of these substances continues to be limited in the country.

Under the premise of zero tolerance, the country worked in 2025 with emphasis to prevent an increase in the presence of drugs amidst a very complicated international framework.

Colonel Juan Carlos Poey Guerra, head of the specialised organ for confronting the use of illegal substances of the Ministry of the Interior (Minint), said that Cuba has had to prepare itself in the face of the complex international phenomenon of illicit drug use, the increase in consumption and trafficking, as well as its diversity.

He assured that the technical conditions exist to detect at the border the presence of novel, very dangerous and lethal chemical compounds, increasingly difficult to discover due to their masking methods.

From 2024 to 2025, the entry by air of 72 operations coming from 11 different origins was obstructed, specified Poey Guerra, but he noted that the majority of the persons arrived from the United States.

For his part, First Colonel Ivey David Carvallo Pérez, head of the General Staff of the Directorate of Border Guard Troops of the Minint, expressed that the nation «is in the middle of the route between producers in the south and the largest consumers in the north, for which controlling the washing ashore of drugs is one of the fundamental tasks carried out by that force,» he emphasised.

He additionally reported that in 2025, 14 fast boats with 39 people on board were captured, which constitutes an important fight against the proliferation of that scourge in the region and the USA, and he added that exchanges of messages and notices with the US Coast Guard are maintained.

Prevent and confront are the two fundamental paths of the work against drugs, and for this Cuba has a National Drugs Commission and since the previous year a National Observatory for the treatment of those issues with the participation of several organisations to jointly face actions, especially of prevention and monitoring.

Creating in the population a rejection of the use of narcotics, especially among the young, and alerting families and the community about the danger it entails is an effective way to combat that scourge.

The Ministries of the Interior, of Justice, of Education and Public Health alongside political and mass organisations carry out discussion sessions, meetings in neighbourhoods and school centres as some of the working methods of the commission.

Preserving health and life will always be the premise of the fight against drugs in Cuba.