Front Burner - Reality-checking the tariff fentanyl crackdown

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

 Last week, Prime Minister Trudeau promised U.S. President Donald Trump a crackdown on fentanyl and tougher border measures in exchange for a pause on tariffs. But what could that fentanyl crackdown actually look like — and will it make things better, or worse? And as the cultural and political backlash against harm reduction increases in Canada, how could this factor into an upcoming election?Today, we’re joined by Manisha Krishnan, an Emmy award-winning journalist covering North American drug policy, for a look at what this crackdown could mean for Canada.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In Scarborough, there's this fire behind our eyes. A passion in our bellies. It's in the hearts of our neighbors. The eyes of our nurses. And the hands of our doctors. It's what makes Scarborough, Scarborough. In our hospitals, we do more than anyone thought possible. We've less than anyone could imagine.

But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together, we can turn grit into greatness. Donate at lovescarborough.ca. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. As you know well, by now, Trump agreed to a 30-day reprieve on blanket tariffs last week after Canada made a series of promises on illegal drugs and border security, including appointing a fentanyl czar and listing Mexican cartels as terrorists.

Look, for weeks now we have been discussing on this show that the threat of fentanyl crossing the border from Canada to the US is really quite minuscule. And it seems increasingly clear that for Trump, fentanyl isn't even his primary motivation. On Sunday during a Super Bowl interview and when speaking to reporters on Air Force One, he didn't even talk about drugs. He griped about our trade deficit. He complained that we don't pay enough to NATO. They pay very little for military. They're not protected at all.

And the reason is they think we're going to protect them. The other thing is we subsidize them to the tune of about $200 billion a year. He didn't once mention fentanyl. All that aside, these promises Canada has made around fentanyl on the border, it looks like they're going to go forward. And we do have a fentanyl problem in this country. Almost 50,000 people have died from overdoses between 2016 and 2024. So what could these promises actually mean for Canadians? Could they make things better? Could they make things worse? And how is the current political environment affecting how we talk about and tackle the drug crisis?

With me now is Manisha Krishnan. She's an Emmy award-winning journalist covering North American drug policy. Hey Manisha, it's great to have you on the show. Hi Jamie. So again, I just want to reiterate it seems increasingly clear that Trump's concerns around fentanyl coming from Canada may be a bit of a red herring here, just like a legal pretext to justify a trade war. But whether or not that's the case, Canada has made these promises. So let's break some of them down, shall we?

Starting with the fentanyl czar, we're recording this at.30 Eastern time, just in case Canada makes any announcements later today about who that might be. But for now, what do we know about what a Fentanyl Tsar is and what this person could be doing? So we don't have a lot of detail exactly on what a Fentanyl Tsar would be doing. What we do know is that they're putting into a place sort of a lot of different

measures, more surveillance, more intelligence, sort of a joint task force working with the US, more investigations into precursor chemicals being used to make fentanyl. Fentanyl's our role, we'll be involved in helping to pull all of this together so we can get over any hurdles and execute on a plan that involves minimizing, if not eliminating, fentanyl from Canadian soil. And so I assume that this fentanyl czar would just sort of be heading up all of those different moving parts. And those moving parts, do you have any sense of what they are trying to accomplish, what

they could be doing? I mean, I think the real thing that they're trying to accomplish is to appease Donald Trump, because otherwise we've had a scourge of fentanyl in this country for years at this point. And so, you know, why would this all just be suddenly coming together now? I think often fentanyl gets brought up in the US, typically just in sort of election periods as kind of a red meat thing. Like it's sort of, it's always about an existential threat. It's always about the border and sort of beefing up the border.

And I'm seeing sort of a continuation of that, except the twist being that this time it's focused on Canada as opposed to Mexico. Do you think any of what they've announced will bring about any kind of concrete change? I mean, I think that if you look at what the US has done, and this has been across both parties, so Democrats and Republicans, they've dumped billions and billions of dollars into disrupting the fentanyl supply chain, interdiction, more fentanyl detection tools at the border. So many of the things that Trudeau has promised, the US has been trying for decades at this point. And the one consistent thing that we've seen is that even when a crackdown initially has seemed to be effective or has worked, it inevitably

gets replaced either with a stronger drug or with more innovation in the drug trade itself. So it's like, you know, China, for example, was pressured by the U.S. to ban fentanyl and its derivatives. And that did reduce the amount of finished fentanyl coming directly to the US and Canada from China. But what happened is that the Mexican cartels stepped in and they got really good at making it themselves. And now they have like a well-oiled machine in terms of fentanyl production in Mexico. So essentially what you're saying is that the Mexican gangs replaced in many ways the fentanyl that was coming from China in recent

years. Yes, exactly. They get the precursor chemicals, many of which still come from China and other Asian countries, and they can synthesize it themselves. Your life is at stake. An experienced cook knows to look at the direction of the wind and to turn around when the wind turns, and he knows that this is vital. There are people who get sick. Production is quick. If a shipment is

seized at the border there's always more on the way. And what we're starting to see in Canada now is domestic labs that are doing the same particularly in the Western provinces. Cartels are known to smuggle truckloads of drugs across the US border and into Canada. But a recent bust in B.C. suggests they're also producing enough here to send abroad. At this super lab, police say the chemicals seized would have amounted to nearly 100 million doses of fentanyl. Just to push back on some of what you said there, a number of RCMP officers and former drug investigators have told media recently that they think this terror crisis may actually

help force a positive change in helping Canada slow the spread of functional, right? Basically that depending on how these policies are implemented, they could give the law enforcement more tools to investigate and prosecute organized crime. They've actually argued that one of the big problems is that some Canadian laws make it very difficult for investigators in other countries to cooperate with the RCMP. What would you say to that argument that they actually do think that this would make a dent? I mean, I'm not surprised that a police force thinks that more money for the war on drugs

and more money for interdiction is a good idea. It virtually justifies their existence. But I will say that maybe some of these things will have an impact, for example, going after organized crime in Canada and their routes of money laundering. Perhaps that will make some sort of dent. But I just think that we have decades upon decades of these various crackdowns to look to. And in every case, virtually, whatever they were going after has been replaced effectively and sometimes and often by something even worse. So that's really where my skepticism comes from. The idea that it could be replaced by something worse.

Can you just elaborate for me on that? Sure. So we've seen a couple of major crackdowns in our lifetime. For example, the prescription opioid crisis. And in the US in particular, but also in Canada, it was a thing. And we cracked down a lot on the prescription of pain pills. And that led a lot of people to use heroin. We cracked down on heroin, and that has resulted in this sort of explosion of fentanyl, which is a lot easier to make. It's a lot easier to smuggle.

You don't need acres and acres of land or crops or anything like that to make fentanyl en masse. And even with the fentanyl trade, when we have sort of gone hard after that, we're now seeing new chemicals entering our drug supply, both in Canada and the US. And some of those drugs include really strong, illicit benzodiazepines, which essentially will sedate a person in a really dangerous way,

as well as animal tranquilizers, which have had devastating effects on people's bodies, causing people to actually need amputations from just how this drug sort of impacts their skin. We're already starting to see pockets of that in the US and in Canada. And so I worry about another super hard crackdown and what the unintended consequence will be in the US and in Canada. And so I worry about another super hard crackdown and what the unintended consequence will be

in the drug supply. ["The New York Times"] In Scarborough, this is fire behind our eyes. A passion in our bellies. It's in the hearts of our neighbors. The eyes of our nurses. And the hands of our doctors.

It's what makes Scarborough, Scarborough. In our hospitals, we do more than anyone thought possible. We've less than anyone could imagine. But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together, we can turn grit into greatness. Donate at lovescarborough.ca. What does a mummified Egyptian child,

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I just want to take a step back for a second and take stock of the political moment that we're in. So Trudeau's time in office has been at least somewhat more open to decriminalization, right? Especially if we compare it to the Stephen Harper era, mandatory minimum sentencing and all of that. Trudeau legalized weed. He's promoted safer supply and supervised consumption site. His government allowed BC to put in place this pilot program for people to carry small amounts of hard drugs. So what do you think it says about the political moment that we're in right now, that the same prime minister is now talking about things like a fentanyl czar? I think what we've seen, so I do think that you're right.

Trudeau has sort of championed a bunch of progressive drug policies for sure and so we're kind of seeing a countrywide backlash towards that we're seeing it in sort of at the at the federal level with Pierre Paglia. There will be life sentences for anyone caught trafficking producing or exporting over 40 milligrams of fentanyl. And 15 years for traffickers caught with between 20 milligrams and 40 milligrams will be the new mandatory sentence. We're seeing it in the provinces, you know, Ontario shutting down safe consumption sites.

There are 17 of these sites across Ontario where users can get their drugs tested for toxins and get emergency care in case of an overdose. 10 will now be shut down. BC kind of gutting its own decrim measure to a large degree. And so I think Trudeau sort of going sort of using this very American rhetoric, which I'm sure he feels like he has to, you know, going after the border and fentanyl, it really does kind of feel like the final nail in the coffin of this era of relatively progressive drug policy. Because we too are devastated by the scourge that is fentanyl, a drug that has torn apart

communities and caused so much pain and torment for countless families across Canada, just like in the United States. A drug that we too want to see wiped from the face of this earth. A drug whose traffickers must be punished. But the other thing I will say, the caveat I will say is, despite the fact that we have had more safe supply and more safe consumption sites, I would argue that we've never really had them on scale sort of in a way that actually corresponds to the level of the problem that we have in Canada.

We've sort of had like piecemeal and pockets of them. Yeah. I want to get into that with you more. First, could we just hone in on the BC pilot project for a minute? So we've talked about this on the show before, but basically the Canadian government gave BC an exemption to drug laws and allowed adults to carry up to 2.5 grams of opioids, cocaine, methamphetamines, or ecstasy for personal use. The pilot came in in January January 2023, but by April 2024, NDP Premier David Eby

announced a pretty major rollback. This amendment will make public drug use illegal in British Columbia. He was obviously responding to a lot of political backlash and a lot of pressure from opposition parties. And ultimately, what do you think happened here? Was this about a failed policy or a failure to launch? I honestly feel that it comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of what Decrim would do.

I think that at this point, the public is a little bit fed up when they look around and they see a lot of public drug use, a lot of visible poverty, a lot of mentally ill people that are on the street. And I think that crisis got worse during the pandemic. And so I think we are seeing a backlash to that. And people may be thinking that decrim would solve that. Or maybe it was sort of like the final thing in a set of what they saw

as progressive drug policies that haven't really worked. And the thing is, Decrym was never going to solve the drug crisis. It's simply one small tool that's more about kind of the criminal justice system and not punishing super marginalized people. But it was never going to sort of take away the wider issue of fentanyl overdoses. And so I think that people are just sort of frustrated and they're blaming the wrong thing when really it's just this massive complicated problem that we haven't managed to solve.

Right. And just to kind of put a really fine point on that here, a lot of evidence broadly supports the idea that these harm reduction efforts work, right? That supervised consumption sites save lives, that police crackdowns haven't stopped drugs from flowing, that really the housing crisis is what's making street drug use more visible. That these pretty small-scale harm reduction initiatives just can't keep up with the fire hose of poison drug supply that's causing overdoses as you mentioned. Experts have been saying this stuff for years. I'm just curious to get your thoughts on this, Manisha, because you spend so much time in it. How do you deal with that when public sentiment just doesn't have the patience for these initiatives, that they're

seeing very visible drugs on their streets and they want it to go away and they see harm reduction as a problem. How do you tackle that, even if the evidence doesn't back them up? I think it's a really difficult question to answer because I don't think that there's a lot of political will, generally speaking, to stand up for drug users.

This is a really marginalized group. It's not exactly a group that most political parties are catering to or vying for their votes. And so I think they kind of get scapegoated for a lot of much more complicated issues in society, such as wealth inequality, such as housing. And these things are really hard to solve. I think it's a lot easier to just take a look at sort

of the lowest hanging fruit and say, OK, well, we're going to ban safe injection sites, and we're going to make your neighborhood safer, even if there's no data really bearing out that that will be the outcome. I think it's a lot more complicated. It would take a lot more sort of courage to actually do something about the housing crisis. And I don't think we've had leadership in that area really from any level of government in like a significant way in a long time.

We're seeing conservative leader, Pierre Pauli, really grabbing onto this moment. What's he been saying in the past week about Fentanyl? Just talk to me a little bit about how he's grabbing this. So he is sort of capitalizing on this. I mean, he's kind of been on this anti sort of harm reduction crusade for a while. He's going after he's gone after individual safe supply doctors. He is called safe injection sites, drug dens. And then I think in the last week or so he's saying that anyone who does like 40 milligrams of fentanyl or is caught with that, which is a tiny amount of fentanyl, should be in prison for life. Forty milligrams is enough to kill 20 people.

Anyone who is involved in trafficking that amount of fentanyl will get a life sentence. We will lock them up and we will throw away the key. And that would virtually criminalize like in a severe way, like anyone who's using street fentanyl. And I mean, it just doesn't make sense. We would backlog our court system and our policing so much. And there's other politicians as well. Danielle Smith, Doug Ford, who are really grabbing onto this political moment

because they get a lot of mileage out of sort of capitalizing on the fentanyl issue. It's something that they've already been doing. And so I think now that it's in the news, they can use it even more to fear monger. I just want to pick up on that 40 milligram number. Straight fentanyl doses, my understanding of them at least, are often around 200 to 500 micrograms, right? So 40 milligrams would probably be something around 100 doses worth. And the way I understand it is that as little as two milligrams could be enough to kill

somebody. So wouldn't 40 milligrams actually be quite a lot to be carrying around? So in terms of what could actually kill somebody, it really depends on the person's opioid tolerance. So somebody who has been using street fentanyl for a long time would have a much higher tolerance than someone who never uses fentanyl

or never uses opioids. But from my understanding, fentanyl is sold on the street as points. And so one point, it's like one small dose would be 10 milligrams. So we're talking about four of those doses that could potentially lock someone away for life. Given the political and cultural moment we're in, how potent might that message be though from these guys? I just talked to me a little bit more about the mileage, right? Like a lot of people really do connect to that message.

Yeah, I think it I mean, I think there's a lot of factors that go into it. Like I sort of mentioned or alluded to before, I think there's a lot of fatigue and frustration at, you know, visible poverty and visible drug use, which has seemingly been getting worse, or at least it looks that way to us. And so I also think there's really a lack of understanding of kind of how the drug crisis works and some of the more like the wider implications. So policing our way out of this, unfortunately, that is a narrative that still really has legs. Frankly, I think a lot of journalists have a very poor understanding of fentanyl and the drug

crisis. And so they do repeat a lot of police talking points more or less uncritically. So I think all of these things kind of feed into a poor misunderstanding of the drug crisis on the part of the public. And now the doctors, the scientists who sort of are on the side of harm reduction,

they have become incredibly politicized. And they're getting threats now. And they're sort of in the middle of this culture war, whereas for before, they were like, we're just kind of espousing what the science is. And now everything has gotten a lot uglier in my point of view. How do you see this conversation ramping up in an election campaign in Canada?

Where do you think it's gonna head? I mean, I think that Polyev, I could see him using what Donald Trump is saying to sort of turn around and manufacture kind of a fentanyl crisis at the border or just anything that he can sort of any way that he can use this to blame Trudeau. I think he will sort of seize on that opportunity because he's already been talking a lot about fentanyl. And so I can see this just sort of playing right into his hands. Okay.

Manisha, I want to thank you so much for this. This is really interesting. Thanks for having me on. All right. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Plus, so thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.