“Let cocaine go”. Rethinking strategies to disrupt the flow of drugs in commercial seaports.

In large commercial seaports policing and security efforts to counter the drug trade, especially cocaine, do not appear to be effective beyond a mere displacement effect. Nevertheless, a “utopia of security” is at the core of designs of today’s ports in the western world. This approach dismisses that most ports are also borderlands, and as such become contested spaces also for illicit trade. Drawing from knowledge gathered through qualitative fieldwork in 8 seaports (2019-2022) and specifically focusing of the case study of the Port of Piraeus (2022), this paper will sustain a counter-intuitive argument. We can hypothesise that cross border and local policing efforts can consider the borderland when countering cocaine trafficking through seaports. Only cocaine destined to the local/national market should be subjected to disruption activities at/around the port, while cross border cocaine trade can be handled with a different approach via international cooperation, by letting cocaine go and reach its destination (to be then ‘chased’ and disrupted elsewhere). Albeit controversial, this approach might lead to 1) reduction of harm connected to the narcotics at national level by better streamlining local resources and 2) a better understanding of how the port-borderland shapes the space and the communities where it exists, also for illicit purposes.