No Evidence of Steady ‘Flow’ of Fentanyl into the US

President Donald Trump has been misrepresenting the unregulated toxic drug crisis for political gain, according to local experts.

As of Sunday, the public messaging was that until Canada “alleviated” the “flow” of “deadly fentanyl,” 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods were here to stay.

Just a day later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced via a tweet that Trump had been appeased by Canada’s promise to crack down on fentanyl at the border and had agreed to pause the institution of the new tariffs until at least March 4.

The problem? While everyone The Tyee spoke with agreed that a catastrophic number of drug-related deaths are happening across North America, no one The Tyee spoke with believed Trump was acting in good faith to protect the lives of people who use drugs.

Speaking with CBC on Monday, for example, former U.S. treasury secretary Larry Summers called Trump’s posturing “theatrics... of a rather depraved sort.”

Data also does not support Trump’s assertions.

According to reporting by the New York Times, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents seized around 19 kilograms of fentanyl at the Canada-U.S. border in 2024. That’s less than 0.2 per cent of what was seized at the U.S.-Mexico border the same year.

Prohibition to blame for deaths, experts say

The ongoing catastrophic loss of life is better explained as a failure of prohibition, rather than a failure of Canada to control fentanyl exports, said Mark Haden, adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia school of population and public health.

The first drug control laws were introduced in 1908, which has created more than a century of robust evidence that prohibition does not work, Haden said.

“The tools of prohibition often work well for politicians who find it valuable to make people afraid and then offer to protect people from this illusion that is being presented,” Haden said. “It’s a very old political strategy.”

It’s one Trump is leaning on again, and Trudeau is being required to follow along with, Haden added.

“This so-called drug policy is reflective of the entire history of drug policy,” said Tyson Singh Kelsall, a PhD candidate at the Simon Fraser University faculty of health sciences, and a researcher with the community-led Police Oversight with Evidence and Research project.

“It’s not really about the drug itself. It very rarely is. It’s much more about the expansion and militarization of police power and it’s most often used as a form of control or social regulation.”

Research has also shown that the more tightly a drug is policed, the more potent and therefore potentially dangerous a drug becomes. This is known as the iron law of prohibition.

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, is used safely in medical facilities for short-term procedures.

But it can become dangerous in the unregulated street supply.

According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. Fentanyl analogues, like carfentanil, are 100 times more potent than fentanyl — 10,000 times more potent than morphine.

That means carfentanil can be lethal in the two-milligram range.

When opioids are sold on the street, they are referred to simply as “down.” That means people can’t know what combination of drugs they are buying and how potent it will be, which makes it unpredictable and therefore dangerous.

Crackdowns lead to less predictable supply, and less predictable supply means more people die, according to a 2024 scoping review of 14 peer-reviewed studies.

The most recent data from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse says that in 2022 there were 81,806 opioid-related deaths in the United States. While most of these deaths involved fentanyl, 14,716 fatalities involved prescription opioids.

In Canada there were 49,105 opioid-related deaths between January 2016 and June 2024, according to the federal government.

“Drug addicts have always provided [politicians with] a convenient bad guy for people to be protected against,” Haden said. But the reality is, Haden added, people who use drugs are themselves at the highest risk of harm and death.

Fentanyl production in Canada

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when trade across the border constricted, there was a shift in Canada’s unregulated drug supply and the amount of domestic fentanyl being produced increased, Singh Kelsall said.

“The argument about how much fentanyl is coming from Canada is a moot point because if you ever stop it coming from one place, it will just come from another,” Singh Kelsall said.

The Tyee asked the Canada Border Services Agency if there was a “flow of fentanyl” crossing the Canada-U.S. border and how much fentanyl or fentanyl precursors the agency had confiscated in 2024.

In response, the agency pointed to a press release about Monday’s announcement. The press release does not include any information or statistics about how much fentanyl or fentanyl precursors are currently seized at the border.

In his tweet, Trudeau said new Canadian measures would include a $1.3-billion border plan, 10,000 frontline personnel to keep an eye on the border around the clock, the labelling of all drug cartels as terrorist organizations and the creation of a fentanyl czar position.

The $1.3-billion border plan had already been announced in December. Journalist Mehdi Hasan pointed out that about 8,500 of those frontline staff are already deployed.

For an American audience

In the United States, the word “czar” is used to describe a high-level official who oversees a specific field.

Using the phrase “fentanyl czar” rather than the more Canadian title of “fentanyl co-ordinator” or “interprovincial-federal committee on fentanyl” signals that Monday’s announcement was made for an American audience — specifically, Trump, said Michael Byers, professor of international politics and Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia.

Labelling drug cartels as terrorist organizations could give authorities “slightly enhanced surveillance abilities,” for example making it easier to get a warrant and making a warrant last longer, but overall it won’t change how Canada polices drug gangs, Byers added.

“I have not heard of the RCMP asking for legal changes to deal with drug gangs,” Byers said. “So I suspect this move is driven by the audience, mainly Donald Trump, and not by any need on the part of Canadian authorities.”

The “new” border plans are “flashy, catchy terms that sound impressive,” Byers said.

But ultimately they’re really about appeasing “an unpredictable, bombastic bully of a U.S. president,” Byers added.

“Whether they will actually make a difference in terms of policy and solving problems is an entirely separate question,” Byers said.

It’s important for everyone to stop and think about why politicians demonize one group or another, Singh Kelsall said.

“We’ve seen the rise of fascist-type policies in the past, where groups who can be othered or labelled as deviant are cast away by the political class, especially in times of economic contraction,” Singh Kelsall said.

“We have to ask why the political class is weaponizing these groups of people while they grasp at power.”