Canada Lets Trump’s Trade War Fuel Its Own Drug War

The Canadian government has continued to step up its resourcing of border enforcement in response to tariff-related demands by United States President Donald Trump, despite calling his claims of fentanyl pouring over the border “bogus.”

On March 4, Trump turned a US-Canada trade war from rhetoric into reality, imposing 25 percent tariffs on Canadian imports. Since then, he has exempted certain goods, threatened that tariffs could increase further and prompted reprisals.  

Trump has long framed his tariffs in part as a response to fentanyl flooding in from Mexico and Canada.

But there’s little evidence of much fentanyl travelling south from Canada.

The Canada Border Services Agency said back in December that Canada was not a significant source of fentanyl in the US. And the US Drug Enforcement Agency agrees, noting that less than 1 percent of cross-border fentanyl seizures came from Canada.

“The excuse that he’s giving for these tariffs today of fentanyl is completely bogus, completely unjustified, completely false,” outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at a March 4 press conference. He suggested the real reason is to weaken the Canadian economy as a prelude to annexing the country.

Yet that same day, Health Canada announced it would be launching a $30.8-million “precursor chemical risk management unit” and establishing a $48-million Canadian Drug Analysis Centre to “strengthen our ability to support law and border enforcement in stopping the production of illegal drugs and the importation of chemicals used to make them.”

It’s far from the first such announcement. Less than a week prior, the Canada Border Services Agency announced “Operation Blizzard,” a “targeted, cross-country initiative aimed at intercepting illegal contraband arriving and leaving Canada, with a focus on fentanyl and other synthetic narcotics.”

The agency announced it had made six seizures in February, totaling 20 pills and 23 grams of a substance suspected to be fentanyl.

It’s all part of a $1.3-billion border security plan, which included the appointment of a “fentanyl czar,” launching the Canada-US Joint Strike Force, and procuring Black Hawk helicopters, drones and mobile surveillance towers, as well as adding new personnel and canine teams.

The plan was intended to stave off US tariffs—yet, exactly a month after the border security plan was announced, the US imposed tariffs anyway.

“We’re talking about trying to stop tiny little packets of chemicals. This is not going to work. It’s an incredible waste of resources.”

When Trudeau called the fentanyl trafficking excuse “bogus,” Nick Boyce, policy director at the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, had a question.

“Are they going to reallocate that $1.3 billion to things that will actually help people? That was just my first thought,” he told Filter.

“We’re talking about trying to stop tiny little packets of chemicals,” he continued. “This is not going to work. It’s an incredible waste of resources, and every dollar we spend doing that is one dollar we’re not spending on addressing housing and employment, and those are things that will actually reduce drug consumption.”

Boyce said the border security plan was “developing policy not based on evidence, just to satisfy someone down south.”

Part of the plan is to detect precursor chemicals coming into Canada through ports, but Boyce said only a small percentage of shipping containers actually get inspected—and there’s a reason for that.

“If we were to actually inspect every single shipping container, the entire economy would just grind to a halt,” he said. “It’s just physically not possible. It’s just not possible. We can’t even stop cars leaving the country in shipping containers. How are we supposed to stop a handful of chemicals coming in?”

Canada’s decision to double down on drug enforcement amounts to imposing extra risks and burdens on people who use drugs in the name of the country’s trade interests.

While stepping up enforcement isn’t likely to make a significant impact on the availability of drugs in Canada or the US, such moves do tend to have  one particular impact on the supply: increasing toxicity.

“None of this addresses demand,” Boyce said. “So long as the demand is there, someone’s going to adapt and come up with something new, whether it’s a new drug, whether it’s a new way to smuggle existing drugs, whether it’s new recipes.”  

The way increased enforcement incentivizes production of less bulky, more potent substances is well known to drug policy scholars as the “Iron Law of Prohibition.”

The introduction of fentanyl to North America’s drug supply was one instance in a series—from opium to morphine, morphine to heroin—that has seen the potency of opioids vastly increase as a way to make smuggling the substances easier. The more recent emergence of highly potent nitazines in the supply could be seen as a continuation. 

These pressures have also led to the introduction of non-opioids into the supply being marketed as “down,” including benzodiazepines and xylazine.

Relatedly, studies have shown that deaths increase in the immediate time and space around drug seizures, following the destabilization of the local supply.

While those studies have looked more at lower-level drug seizures, Boyce said he would expect to see the same kind of fallout from larger drug seizures as well.

Altogether, Canada’s decision to double down on drug enforcement amounts to imposing extra risks and burdens on people who use drugs in the name of the country’s trade interests.

“People will still find drugs, and they’ll find new ways to make them.”

Boyce said there is a supply-side intervention that would actually impact the illicit drug supply: regulation.

He pointed to a 2023 report from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights that called for states to “take control of illegal drug markets through responsible regulation, to eliminate profits from illegal trafficking, criminality and violence.”

“It doesn’t have to be the model of alcohol distribution. It’s probably not a good model,” Boyce said.

Stemming the flow of drugs into the US, wherever they originate, would ultimately require reducing demand in the US market, he added.   

Otherwise, in the unlikely event that Trump’s tariffs substantially reduced the flow, the outcome might indeed be a boost to US-based manufacturing—of illicit drugs.

“People will still find drugs,” Boyce said, “and they’ll find new ways to make them.”

Photograph by Jimmy Emerson via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0