President-elect Donald Trump this week cited drugs as a reason to threaten to eliminate U.S. tariffs on Canadian imports.
“These tariffs will remain in effect until we stop drugs, especially fentanyl, and all illegal aliens from invading our country!” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.
Canadian politicians rightly point out that Canada and Mexico, a fellow tariff victim, have little in common when it comes to the flow of illegal drugs (or immigration).
But it’s also true that fentanyl production in Canada is surging as border seizures decline. This marks Canada’s transition from a purchaser of fentanyl and methamphetamine to a significant producer and even exporter.
Domestic production depends on whether raw materials are imported into the country. Efforts to combat drug trafficking are focusing on these ingredients and precursors as the pharmaceutical industry moves away from its reliance on plants such as coca and poppy and toward synthetic products.
Fentanyl deaths may have peaked
2022 may be remembered as the worst year of the fentanyl epidemic. The number of synthetic opioid overdose deaths in the United States began to rise rapidly around 2014, but appears to have peaked that year. decreased slightly In 2023.
Canada also posted slight decrease About 21 people died every day from fatal drug overdoses in the first three months of 2024, compared to 23 people a day during the same period last year. (For comparison, about two Canadians die each day from homicide and five die on the streets.)
But that little bit of good news can’t mask the heavy toll fentanyl has taken on both countries.
Between 2016 and 2024, both countries lost nearly as many people to opioid addiction as they lost in World War II. There are approximately 47,000 in Canada and 400,000 in the United States. As with war, fentanyl victims are usually young.
So it’s no surprise that fentanyl has become a political issue, and whether or not Trump’s allegations against Canada are true, it is clearly in both countries’ interests to do something about fentanyl.
The economics of manufacturing fentanyl locally
The logic of importing chemicals to make fentanyl and meth, rather than producing them overseas and importing the finished product, is not difficult to understand.
China is the largest supplier of chemicals used to make synthetic opioids. China execute someone People who manufacture illegal fentanyl.
But that same Chinese government has long Close your eyes happily to Chinese companies that sell chemicals that other companies may use to make fentanyl elsewhere in the world. This fact led the United States Sanction Chinese companies And they accuse Washington of profiting from trade without facing domestic consequences.
After sanctioning eight China-based chemical companies last year, the U.S. Department of Justice said the companies demonstrated by their actions that they knew their products were being used for illegal purposes. said.
“(The eight companies) used U.S. reshippers, false return labels, false invoices, fraudulent postage charges, and packaging that concealed the true contents of the package and the identity of the seller to thwart law enforcement. They often try to escape,” the ministry said in a media statement.
“Furthermore, these companies tend to use cryptocurrency transactions to hide their identities and the location and movement of funds.”
A super lab is born in Canada
The two largest criminal organizations involved in importing precursors into North America are the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG).
They operate the sophisticated laboratories needed to turn precursors into finished opioids and methamphetamines, generating billions of dollars in the process.
However, its production is not limited to Mexico. A recent RCMP raid in the Falklands, British Columbia, exposed a sophisticated laboratory production facility unlike any previously discovered in Canada. The facility had the capacity to produce large quantities of fentanyl and meth for export (although RCMP reported that the target market for the drug was not the United States).
This was just the latest in a series of seizures of precursor chemicals by British Columbia RCMP.
There are also increasing signs that Mexican cartels are seeking to establish a foothold and production facilities in Western Canada.
There is nothing new in efforts to crack down on precursors. In fact, the main precursor of methamphetamine (1-phenyl-2-propanone) [P2P] and methylamine) and fentanyl (4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine) [ANPP] and norfentanyl) are almost as tightly regulated as the finished drug itself.
As a result, the focus of law enforcement and regulators has shifted to less regulated “precursors,” such as 4-piperidone, which is used to make ANPP and is also used to make fentanyl.
Canada and Mexico have taken action against the substance.
In June, canada put 4-Piperidone, “salts, derivatives and analogues thereof, and salts of derivatives and analogues” Controlled Substances Act As a controlled substance.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum highlighted her country’s anti-fentanyl efforts in a letter to President Trump in response to the tariff threat.
“My nation’s legislature is in the process of approving a constitutional amendment that would make the manufacture, distribution, and commercialization of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs a serious crime and deny any bail.” she wrote. .
“Nonetheless, it is well known that chemical precursors are entering Canada, the United States and Mexico illegally from Asian countries, making international cooperation essential.”
Whack-a-mole game
However, one of the problems with managing synthetic substances is that there are often substitutes available, and there are always precursors to their precursors.
Calvin Christie spent 32 years in the RCMP, many of them investigating transnational organized crime.
“One of the complexities that is very difficult for law enforcement and border residents is the variations and changes in the structure of some of these chemicals,” he told CBC News.
In some cases, small molecular changes are made to a banned substance, making it legal and no longer regulated.
“They design it so that law enforcement and others can’t seize it because it doesn’t fit a certain schedule within the legal framework,” Christie said.
It would not be difficult to ban 4-piperidone, a substance that has no significant commercial use beyond the production of fentanyl. However, 4-piperidone itself can be made from other substances that are less tightly regulated.
And once these substances are regulated, drug producers can move further back in the production chain to reach the precursors – substances that have legitimate uses in industry and are therefore very difficult to regulate. .
At some point, efforts to stop illegal drug production begin to interfere with legal commerce.
Different ways to skin a cat
Moreover, when one precursor is banned, another is quickly found (or designed) to replace it.
Case in point: When the stimulant epidemic began in the United States, most stimulants were synthesized in small domestic laboratories starting with pseudoephedrine, which is found in cough suppressants. Methamphetamine manufacturers hired addicts known as “smurfs” to go around drug stores and buy up tons of cough syrup.
The U.S. government responded in 2005: Fighting the Methamphetamine Epidemic Prevention Actprohibits over-the-counter sales of such medicines.
But by then, Mexican drug cartels, which had already made their fortunes on cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, were interested in the stimulant market and were trying to obtain pseudoephedrine on an industrial scale.
Around 2008, as governments sought to shut down international trade, Mexican cartels simply moved their ephedrine trafficking routes to other countries. Argentina etc..
By the time the ephedrine trade was more effectively controlled, cartels realized they no longer needed ephedrine. They were able to manufacture meth using the “P2P” method, starting with 1-phenyl-2-propanone.
By 2019, the Drug Enforcement Administration was reporting It shows that more than 99 percent of all Mexican meth samples tested were produced using P2P methods.
In fact, there are dozens of different ways to produce methamphetamine, and the methamphetamine coming out of Mexico today is as pure as ever and cheaper than ever.
follow the money
Efforts to disrupt the international drug trade have been unsuccessful, even though the drug relies on the cultivation of crops such as coca and poppies that can (in theory) be destroyed by spraying or by hand. today, More land is dedicated to coca cultivation more than ever in front.
But for synthetic resins, the challenge is even greater, as there are no obvious choke points where authorities can step in and halt production. Christie said a strategy that focuses primarily on a drug’s ingredients is likely doomed to failure.
“I think it has to be a more strategic, holistic approach,” he said. “That includes, yes, looking at the pioneers and finding out where they came from. I’d just say that’s one aspect.”
