Cartels expected to increase cocaine smuggling to Europe as American counter-narcotic actions increase the ante
Increased counter narcotics enforcement activity in the Americas during 2025 and 2026 by the United States administration has disrupted traditional cocaine trafficking routes used by the cartels and impeded their ability to move their illicit drugs into their biggest market, the United States. These actions have forced them to seek new opportunities to protect and maintain their cash flow and develop new smuggling techniques. This includes cocaine into manufactured components, to ensure their ‘finished product’ reaches the end user without interruption. Europe is firmly in their sights.
Other contributing factors leading the cartels to pivot towards Europe include the December 2025 designation of Fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD), and the declaration of some cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) in early 2025.
Europe has become a central narcotics distribution location for organized crime due to its established narcotics smuggling supply chains, entrenched cocaine use, sophisticated population, and social freedoms. Additionally, the continent’s various ports handle significant trade volumes, which criminal networks will attempt to exploit to reach their end users. Not only are Europe’s ports located at important positions on global trade routes, but the volume of traffic flowing through them provides an ideal opportunity to hide cocaine and other illegal narcotic shipments. The World Drug Report 2025, released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC), notes that, “for cocaine, the levels of reported seizures in Europe have continued to increase year on year.”
Despite the increase in cocaine usage, Europe’s efforts to seize cocaine shipments have produced remarkable results. In the European Drug Report 2025, the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA) reports that cocaine seizures in 2023 hit a record high, totaling 419 tons. However, the emerging tactic of cocaine infusion is set to complicate matters and is something that neither customs officers, canines, nor traditional detection technology can identify.
Cocaine infusion
Cocaine infusion, or chemical concealment, is a complicated process requiring scientific expertise and a laboratory/manufacturing facility to mix the appropriate reagents with other chemicals and manufacture what appears to be a legitimate product. These goods can be manufactured and transported, disguised as shampoo, nail polish, charcoal, finished cement products, or other plastic goods that appear identical to the real goods and cannot be discovered at a glance.
Detecting the products infused with cocaine, or any narcotic, requires an intricate laboratory process, which takes time and can delay shipments. Border officials are unlikely to delay suspect shipments without confirmatory information, since, if shipments are impeded for too long, there could be a cost to the government in the form of refunds to legitimate importers for delays if cocaine is not found.
Once delivered to the intended destination, another laboratory process is required where chemicals are used to remove the cocaine from a product and reconstitute it.
Infusion, as a narcotics concealment strategy, is growing in use. Just recently the Malaysian police dismantled an international drug syndicate. They found, for the first time in their country, evidence that showed that narcotics, in this case MDMA, were being infused into cement. Evidence of the ability to extract the narcotic from the finished cement product was discovered.
The key benefit to cartels using a chemical concealment process is that it is much more difficult for border and port authorities to discover the drugs. Even the odor of the manufactured goods can be disguised rendering canines and some analytical technology ineffective. The additional investment in concealing and then reconstituting the cocaine (which results in a minimal percentage loss of cocaine for the cartels) provides a better return on investment in terms of getting the narcotic to market than older smuggling methods.
In a mass container shipment, a few boxes containing ‘infused cocaine’ can be included amongst legitimate products and separated once they get past port inspections for shipment to reconstitution laboratories. The EU’s open-border policy means that once a shipment clears customs at the port of entry, the goods can be transported to any other member state without further border inspections or delays. For example, over 50% of the containers arriving by sea leave the port of Hamburg by train, heading toward Central and Eastern Europe.
Cocaine-infused products can be identified using advanced technologies, such as Dual-Energy and Backscatter X-ray systems, which reveal the density and atomic composition of objects, or cutting-edge spectroscopy devices that measure the chemical fingerprint of the goods scanned. Unfortunately, not all EU ports have these systems in place and on site.
European port counter-narcotics
EU authorities are therefore facing an almost impossible task. However, the region has an advantage in its cooperation among member states and with many external countries, where intelligence is shared, and authorities work together. The Maritime Analysis and Operations Center (Narcotics), a cooperative effort involving Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United Kingdom, aims to combat illicit drug trafficking by sea and air. The organization also continually includes other countries in its efforts to fight narcotics trafficking, especially cocaine producers or logistics partners in South America. The European Ports Alliance is also actively involved in the fight against narcotics and organized crime.
As a criminal organizations’ tactics evolve, port authorities, intelligence agencies, and law enforcement, must also adapt to newer infusion strategies, changing the manner in which they cooperate. While traditional interdiction methods must remain in place and be improved, sharing transportation and manufacturing information that can be collated and analyzed must become a priority. Data is becoming the EU authorities’ best opportunity for detecting and seizing cocaine before it reaches the market.
By working with the authorities from various countries around the world and private-sector companies, sharing information about trade routes, shipping manifests and manufacturing production, information can be weaponized against the cartels.
The challenge is yet more complicated, however, as the cartels are adapting with a strategy known as the ‘waterbed effect’. As soon as pressure is applied in one area, such as the major EU ports, traffic is diverted to smaller ports, employing new maritime routes while also reducing the size of their shipments. Currently, we see ports in Sweden, Poland, Greece, and Turkey, among others, targeted as they are perceived as being less secure.
Despite the infusion process, cartels will still continue to import cocaine in the usual manner, not only hiding it in containers among legitimate goods, but also use ‘deep concealment’ to slip past customs. Deep concealment includes attaching drugs to the ship’s hull and offloading the goods offshore, where smaller boats pick them up.
Port security must therefore be enhanced at all ports of entry to the continent, and information shared with smaller ports, as the cartels will exploit any weakness they find. Part of the security enhancements will also involve the human element, as bribery and intimidation of port security and administrative staff are always a risk.
Mitigation efforts
Port authorities must therefore not only maintain their current drug discovery processes and patrols, but also enhance them as far as possible with the latest X-ray scanning and other detection technologies, such as the Raman Spectroscopy platform which has been widely adopted in the United States by various federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies including Customs and Border Patrol and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The Scientific Working Group for the Analysis of Seized Drugs (SWGDRUG) defined Raman Spectroscopy as a Category A analytical technique for identifying drugs and chemicals.
However, it is, of course, impossible to scan and inspect every container entering Europe’s ports. The EU, therefore, needs new tactics to identify suspect shipments before they reach EU territory. Today’s drug interdiction operations must therefore adapt to focus more on information than on physical logistics alone. Collaborating with private global shipping companies and building trust relationships with them empowers the sharing of information (within the confines of the GDPR) to identify suspect shipments.
Using artificial intelligence (AI), which is excellent at quickly sifting through large volumes of data, shipping routes and manifests can be examined, along with source and destination information and the companies involved in transporting goods. The technology will be able to discover even the smallest anomalies in shipment details, such as unexpected detours, unknown companies suddenly shipping large amounts of goods from new locations, etc. This can be an indication for authorities to narrow their focus and target these companies and their shipments.
Transportation logs within the EU, despite the absence of borders, can also provide valuable information to investigations. Reconstitution laboratories will require large facilities and are likely to be located in quieter areas where drug enforcement authorities have minimal or no presence. New, regular shipments to areas with little or no historical manufacturing activity might indicate the operation of a laboratory.
Naturally, expanding cooperation and intelligence exchange with authorities in South and North America, as well as other jurisdictions, will only add to the data to be analyzed. With proper analysis, AI systems could map shipping routes from manufacturing sources to destinations, including raw materials supply chains, and identify anomalies indicative of potential drug manufacturing and shipments. The more information collected and analyzed, the better AI models will become at detecting subtle deviations from the norm.
Transnational information analysis
The European cocaine market appears to be in a state of continuous change, as criminal networks evade traditional interdiction by adopting new technologies and techniques, and manipulating global supply chains. Moreover, America’s targeted policies against narcotics smuggling put Europe in organized crime’s crosshairs as the primary destination for cocaine.
The way forward for European authorities lies in the deep integration of public and private sector data, the standardization of security benchmarks across all ports (regardless of size), and the continued expansion of operational alliances with source countries such as Colombia and logistical hubs such as Venezuela. Cooperation and information sharing across the globe will empower authorities to identify suspect shipments and products that have been infused with cocaine, supporting better interdiction processes without disrupting trade.
Enhancing anti-narcotics efforts to combat cocaine and other drugs requires a more strategic and smarter approach. To effectively mitigate the public health and security risks posed by the expanding cocaine trade, the European Union requires a collaborative response that is based on transnational cooperation and information sharing, a multidisciplinary cross-agency approach, and advanced technologies capable of meeting the challenge that today’s cartels present. Ports will continue to play a critical role in counter-narcotics policing.
Michael W. Brown is the global director of counter-narcotics technology at Rigaku Analytical Devices. He has a distinguished career spanning more than 32 years as a Special Agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Most recently, he was the DEA Headquarters staff coordinator for the Office of Foreign Operations for the Middle East-Europe-Afghanistan-India. Prior to that, he served as the country attaché in India and Myanmar, providing foreign advisory support for counter-narcotic enforcement. He also spent 10 years in Pakistan as a special advisor to the US Embassy on various law enforcement issues.
