Why more fentanyl production could be moving to Canada

Edmonton Journal

a day ago

Although there's no evidence of any significant flows of fentanyl into the United States from Canada, an American authority on 'criminal supply chains' warned Friday that that could change abruptly if U.S. efforts to better seal its border with Mexico are successful.
Article content
Jonathan Caulkins, who researches supply chains that support illegal markets for the Manhattan Institute think tank and Carnegie Mellon University. said the drug cartels that control the North American fentanyl trade may well shift large chunks of their operations to Canada if the northern border becomes the path of least resistance.
Article content
Article content
Caulkins, the co-author behind a recent Manhattan Institute study of fentanyl supply chains, said the cartels are sophisticated, mobile and will adjust quickly if their cross-border routes are choked.
Article content
Article content
'They're not trying (now), but they sure could,' he said in an interview hours after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to increase tariffs on some Canadian exports (those products that aren't captured by the Canada-U.S.-Mexico free trade agreement) to the U.S. to 35 per cent from 25 per cent. Those tariffs, which kicked in earlier Friday, were necessary, according to Trump, because Canada has failed to co-operate with U.S. efforts to curb 'the ongoing flood of fentanyl and other illicit drugs.'
Article content
Candace Laing, chief executive of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said Trump's fact sheet on the tariffs should be called a 'fact-less sheet' when it comes to using fentanyl as a justification for trade decisions about Canada. 'More fact-less tariff turbulence does not advance North American economic security,' she said.
Article content
Article content
In the Manhattan Institute study, Caulkins and colleague Bishu Giri found that the vast majority of the fentanyl entering the U.S. from within North America is coming from Mexico, not Canada.
Article content
Article content
They used new data from 2023–24 to show that about 40 per cent of the large seizures of fentanyl in the U.S. occurred in counties along the Mexican border, while just 1.2 per cent of the fentanyl powder and 0.5 per cent of pills along the Canadian border.
Article content
To effectively combat the problem, the researchers wrote, law enforcement and legislators need to begin with accurate information. Caulkins said that fentanyl producers in Mexico and Canada are different in that the Canadian operations tend to produce opioids from imports that are nearly completely assembled with just the finishing ingredients added here, while the cartels in Mexico assemble all the ingredients to make opioids in that country to export to the U.S.