The Boat Strikes Aren't Squeezing Cocaine Supply
Sinking Boats, Not the Cocaine Market
A year into the strikes in the Caribbean and the Pacific, the market is sending a clear message: cocaine is as cheap, pure, and available as it has ever been.
Washington says it is winning the war at sea. The Coast Guard seized nearly 510,000 pounds of cocaine in fiscal year 2025, the most in its history and more than three times its annual average. Since September 2025, lethal military strikes on suspected drug boats have killed more than 200 people. Officials say these operations are keeping drugs off American streets.
If that were true, we would see it in the market. We do not. By every measure the government itself uses, there is little or no evidence that the strikes have reduced the supply of cocaine reaching the United States.
The price test
The logic of supply-side drug control is simple. If you seize or destroy enough product, it becomes scarce, and traffickers pass their losses on to buyers. Effective interdiction shows up as higher prices. That is the test the strikes have to pass.
They are failing it. According to a DEA assessment reported in July by the Washington Post, a kilogram of cocaine in Florida sells for $13,000 to $15,000. That is roughly half what it cost five years ago. The DEA found that prices rose briefly after the strikes began, then "reverted to previous levels." Its conclusion: "Price and availability have not been noticeably affected."
The story is the same on the street. Nabarun Dasgupta, a drug researcher at the University of North Carolina, has found that a gram still sells for $60 to $100 in many U.S. cities, https://gvwire.com/2026/05/29/boat-strikes-have-failed-to-curb-flow-of-cocaine-to-us-experts-say/.
DEA Administrator Terry Cole has claimed that kilo prices rose 30 to 45 percent because of the "immense pressure" on traffickers. He has named no cities and no dates. His own agency's analysts say any rise was temporary.
Purer than ever
Purity is the second test. When supply tightens, dealers cut their product to stretch it. The opposite is happening. DEA laboratory data show that the average purity of seized cocaine climbed every year from 54 percent in 2020 to 84 percent in 2024. Wholesale seizures of 10 kilograms or more averaged 88 percent, the highest in a decade of tracking.
The strikes have not reversed that trend. Pentagon officials told Congress in July that they had not reduced purity. Dasgupta's testing found cocaine in 2026 was, if anything, slightly less adulterated than in 2025. Adm. Nathan Moore, who commands the Coast Guard's Atlantic Area, has said he has not seen "any noticeable difference" in the flow of cocaine.
When the product gets purer and the price falls at the same time, the cost of a pure gram drops even faster than the kilo price suggests. That is the signature of a well-supplied market.
Why seizures are soaring
So how can seizures hit record highs while the market stays flush? Because record seizures measure how much cocaine is moving, not how much is being stopped.
Production has exploded. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that Colombia's potential cocaine output jumped 53 percent in a single year, to about 2,664 tons in 2023, even though coca cultivation grew only 10 percent. That is roughly eleven times what the Coast Guard seized in its record year. When that much product enters the pipeline, any serious interdiction effort will post record numbers. Seizures are rising because the flow is rising.
Traffickers are also adapting, as they always have. The DEA reports that smugglers have switched to larger vessels, routes that hug the coastline, and more aircraft departing from the Colombia–Venezuela border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized more cocaine in the eight months after the strikes began (47,808 pounds) than in the eight months before (43,227 pounds). As one DEA official put it, "When you squeeze the balloon on one side, it always expands on the other side." Latin Americans have watched this balloon move for forty years.
The cost of a policy that doesn't work
None of this should surprise anyone who has studied the drug trade. Interdiction at sea has never had a lasting effect on prices in U.S. markets. What is new is the cost. Brown University's Costs of War project put the campaign's price at $4.7 billion in its first nine months. The strikes have taken more than 200 lives, often without public evidence of who was aboard. They have also pulled DEA informants and investigators away from the casework that dismantles trafficking networks. Even Marine Gen. Francis Donovan has acknowledged that kinetic strikes "aren't the answer."
If the goal is less cocaine on American streets, policymakers should judge this campaign by what happens to price, purity and availability, not by tonnage seized or boats destroyed. They should put resources into financial and intelligence work targeting the organizations themselves, into stabilizing production zones in Colombia and its neighbors, and into reducing demand at home.
The market has already delivered its verdict. A year of explosions at sea has left cocaine cheaper, purer and just as easy to find. Congress should stop taking seizure headlines as proof of success and demand evidence that the strikes are delivering on their promises.
Eduardo A. Gamarra is a professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University, where he studies drug trafficking and security in Latin America.
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