Researchers say cocaine prices stay steady despite Trump boat strikes

Price is the clearest test of whether the Trump administration’s boat strikes are squeezing cocaine supply, and so far the market is not blinking. Researchers say cocaine remains as easy to buy in many U.S. cities as it was before the campaign began, with street prices still running about $60 to $100 per gram.

That matters because the operation has escalated sharply. By late October 2025, the U.S. military had carried out at least nine strikes on suspected drug-smuggling vessels and killed at least 37 people. By May 29, 2026, later reporting put the toll at 59 boat strikes and 196 deaths. Donald Trump has justified the campaign by saying the United States is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, while the Pentagon has said intelligence confirmed the boats were carrying narcotics destined for America.

But the trafficking picture is more complicated than the White House framing suggests. Experts cited in the debate have said vessels linked to Venezuela were mainly moving cocaine toward Europe, not fentanyl toward the United States. Much of the fentanyl that reaches American communities still arrives over land from Mexico, not by the sea routes now under attack. That weakens the case that boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean should produce an immediate collapse in U.S. cocaine availability.

Public-health researchers say the broader indicators also fail to show a meaningful squeeze. If supply were tightening, they would expect obvious stress in the market, including rising prices. Instead, cocaine purity and adulterant patterns continue to be tracked in domestic samples, and the Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2024 Cocaine Signature Program analyzed 732 domestic seizures representing about 39 metric tons. The agency says that work helps track purity, cutting agents, processing solvents and geographic origin to map trafficking trends.

The wider drug landscape points in the same direction. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime maps show cocaine flows across the Americas moving by water, air and land, rooted in departure and transit countries in South America. A 2025 CDC-backed study also found fentanyl in street cocaine samples collected from 77 harm-reduction programs and clinics in 25 states, underscoring the overlap between stimulant markets and the overdose crisis even when cocaine itself is not getting scarcer.

For communities facing overdose risk and unstable drug supplies, the policy question is not whether the strikes sound tough. It is whether they are changing the facts on the street. So far, the clearest metric available suggests they are not.