Drug traffickers are adapting their strategies after a series of U.S. military strikes against them.
Now they're turning to old pathways and shift routes, including targeting the more lucrative European markets, where cocaine and other narcotics can sell for far higher prices.
"More covert means are being used to trans-ship drugs," according to Patrae Rowe, head of the Firearms and Narcotics Investigation Division of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, reported The New York Times on Tuesday. This includes "smaller loads, hidden in food shipments or other goods," Rowe added.
President Donald Trump's renewed maritime crackdown on the cartels his administration calls "narco-terrorists" means changing tactics in the Caribbean Sea for the smugglers.
The Caribbean once dominated global drug trafficking, as immortalized in the "Miami Vice" era of the 1980s, when Colombian cartels shipped cocaine directly into South Florida. After the 1990s, enforcement pressure shifted routes to Mexico and Central America.
Typically, traffickers move Colombian cocaine to islands in the Caribbean such as Trinidad, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica.
The drugs are then repackaged and staged for shipment abroad, with some cargo traveling through several islands before being loaded onto container ships or "go-fast" boats bound for their final destination.
Since September, U.S. forces have destroyed at least four such boats, killing 21 people in a series of strikes across Caribbean waters.
The White House calls the operations a success, but legal scholars say attacking suspected traffickers without clear evidence violates international law.
Meanwhile, with U.S. warships patrolling regional waters, smugglers are also shifting from speedboats to larger commercial vessels. The drugs are increasingly hidden among legitimate goods such as produce, a strategy that makes detection more difficult and disperses risk among numerous small shipments.
Authorities in Trinidad and Tobago have also seen a surge in illegal flights dropping bundles of cocaine into the sea to be retrieved later by larger ships, a senior anti-narcotics official said.
"Where there used to be five illegal flights in a morning, now there are 15," the official said, noting that U.S. warships typically avoid attacking larger vessels or cargo carriers.
Elsewhere in the region, the crackdown has altered traffickers' logistics. Dominican officials say sightings of drug-running boats have fallen sharply, while in Jamaica, smugglers are breaking up cargoes into smaller portions to minimize losses if intercepted.
"They've diversified," said one regional security analyst. "Now local gangs handle storage and transport, while international cartels manage supply and financing."
The U.S. Coast Guard has seized nearly 175,000 kilos of cocaine during the last fiscal year, more than double the year before, with about a third of that coming from Caribbean operations, underscoring that even as routes shift, the region remains a vital transit point.
Over the past five years, Dominican authorities have confiscated nearly 225,000 kilos of narcotics, much of it moving through commercial ports. Still, U.S. and United Nations data show the majority of cocaine bound for the United States continues to move along Pacific routes.
"The Caribbean may not carry most of the load to the U.S. anymore," said Alberto Arean Varela of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, "but it's increasingly important for Europe — and for traffickers who need flexibility."
Meanwhile, experts say Trump's military buildup may push up the price of cocaine, which now sells for about $3,000 a kilo in the Caribbean, but they do not expect the strikes to dent a global surplus of the drug.
"There's simply more to smuggle," Varela said. "When enforcement rises, traffickers don't stop. They adapt."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.