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The Fentanyl Crisis Is A War, And Canada Is On The Wrong Side

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Addictions

The Fentanyl Crisis Is A War, And Canada Is On The Wrong Side

Todayville

Published

4 months ago

8 minute read

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Brian Giesbrecht

Drug cartels, China, and Canada’s negligence are fueling the deadliest epidemic of our time

It took the threat of U.S. tariffs for Canada to wake up to the horrors of the fentanyl epidemic that is destroying young lives and shattering families. Canadians, who panicked over COVID-19 deaths, have hardly noticed that far more healthy Canadians and Americans are now dying from fentanyl overdoses than ever died from COVID.

Yet while Americans confront this deadly epidemic, Canada remains oblivious to how deeply the crisis has infiltrated our borders.

A grim milestone came in 2021 when U.S. opioid overdose deaths exceeded 100,000 in a single year. More than a million Americans have died from opioid overdoses since these highly addictive drugs first entered the market. Today, fentanyl overdose is the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 25.

Behind every kilogram of fentanyl lies half a million potential deaths. Behind every pill—a game of Russian roulette.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid so powerful that one kilogram can kill 500,000 people. Its extreme potency makes it both highly dangerous and easy to smuggle. A single backpack thrown across the border can carry $1 million worth of the drug. It is easy to see why so many opportunists are willing to risk their lives producing and selling it. Overdose statistics fail to capture the bodies found in deserts or those murdered in the vicious drug trade.

Fentanyl is produced for a few cents per pill but sold on the street for many times that, making it both profitable and a cheap high. Incredibly addictive, it is found in virtually all street drugs, giving “the most bang for the buck.” Made by amateurs, these drugs are carelessly laced with lethal doses. And because the pills look identical, users never know whether a dose will get them high—or kill them.

But Canada is not just a bystander in this crisis. A loophole in our border laws—the “de minimis” exemption—has turned Canada into a gateway for fentanyl entering U.S. communities. This exemption allows exporters to ship small packages valued at less than $800 directly to customers with minimal border inspection. Chinese exporters exploit this loophole to ship fentanyl precursors into Canada, where they are processed into pills or moved to Mexico under the supervision of Mexican drug cartels.

The Trump administration has pressed Canada to close this loophole. That it has existed for years, almost unnoticed, should shock us to the core.

The problem of fentanyl production within Canada should not be minimized. The RCMP reports that fentanyl labs are appearing across B.C., often producing methamphetamine alongside fentanyl. These small labs supply both domestic and international markets. The threat is real, and it is growing.

Exactly how many Canadians have died from fentanyl overdoses is unclear. However, with Canada’s population roughly one-ninth of the U.S., it is reasonable to estimate that Canadian deaths are approximately one-ninth of U.S. numbers.

But overdose numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. The number of lives wrecked by this drug is staggering. Parents watch their children—once vibrant and full of promise—disappear before their eyes. Their beauty fades, their minds unravel, and their lives collapse into the desperate cycle of chasing the next fix. Some escape. Many don’t. Until death takes them, that is.

The new Trump administration has promised to confront this carnage. “This is a drug war,” Peter Navarro, assistant to the president and director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, recently told reporters. “The Mexican cartels have expanded up to Canada, making fentanyl there and sending it down to the U.S. The Chinese are using Canada to send in small parcels below the radar. It’s important that Canadians understand we are trying to stop the killing of Americans by these deadly drugs.”

But while the U.S. acts, Canada hesitates. Trump is addressing the problem—Canada is enabling it.

The Trump administration also views Canada’s lax drug laws and casual attitude toward buying and selling even the most dangerous drugs as an exacerbating factor. However, on the fentanyl issue, it is clear Trump is determined to tackle a problem Canada has largely ignored. He should be commended for this, and Canada should start cleaning up its own mess.

Yet fentanyl smuggling from Canada is only part of a larger issue. Behind the drug trade lies an even more insidious enemy: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The importation of fentanyl precursors from China, facilitated by Mexican cartels, has turned Vancouver into a money-laundering hub for the CCP. Investigative reporters like Sam Cooper and Terry Glavin have revealed the depth of this corruption, despite the Hogue Commission’s failure to expose it fully.

Ryan P. Williams, president of the Claremont Institute, warns that “The fentanyl crisis is part of a larger campaign by the CCP to destabilize Western nations. They flood our streets with poison while corrupting our institutions from within. If Canada doesn’t confront this threat, it will lose not only lives—but its sovereignty.”

Our new “fentanyl czar,” appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, should not only address the drug crisis but also expose how deeply a hostile CCP has compromised Canada.

Tackling the fentanyl problem will be enormously difficult—likely impossible— for the Trump administration without cooperation from China, Mexico and even Canada. And forcing that cooperation is likely the first part of Trump’s plan.

Canada’s role may be small, but it must take full responsibility for securing its borders and confronting the fentanyl crisis. Trump has forced us to act. Now, if we are serious about restoring our nation’s integrity, we must break the CCP’s grip on our institutions.

In doing so, we will save Canadian lives.

Brian Giesbrecht is a retired Manitoba judge. He is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He was recently named the ‘Western Standard Columnist of the Year.’

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Addictions

Why B.C.’s new witnessed dosing guidelines are built to fail

Published on July 14, 2025

By

Todayville
Photo by Acceptable at English Wikipedia, ‘Two 1 mg pills of Hydromorphone, prescribed to me after surgery.’ [Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons]

By Alexandra Keeler

B.C. released new witnessed dosing guidelines for safer supply opioids. Experts say they are vague, loose and toothless

This February, B.C pledged to reintroduce witnessed dosing to its controversial safer supply program.

Safer supply programs provide prescription opioids to people who use drugs. Witnessed dosing requires patients to consume those prescribed opioids under the supervision of a health-care professional, rather than taking their drugs offsite.

The province said it was reintroducing witnessed dosing to “prevent the diversion of prescribed opioids and hold bad actors accountable.”

But experts are saying the government’s interim guidelines, released April 29, are fundamentally flawed.

“These guidelines — just as any guidelines for safer supply — do not align with addiction medicine best practices, period,” said Dr. Leonara Regenstreif, a primary care physician specializing in substance use disorders. Regenstreif is a founding member of Addiction Medicine Canada, an advocacy group that represents 23 addiction specialists.

Addiction physician Dr. Michael Lester, who is also a founding member of the group, goes further.

“Tweaking a treatment protocol that should not have been implemented in the first place without prior adequate study is not much of an advancement,” he said.

Witnessed dosing

Initially, B.C.’s safer supply program was generally administered through witnessed dosing. But in 2020, to facilitate access amidst pandemic restrictions, the province moved to “take-home dosing,” allowing patients to take their prescription opioids offsite.

After pandemic restrictions were lifted, the province did not initially return to witnessed dosing. Rather, it did so only recently, after a bombshell government report alleged more than 60 B.C. pharmacies were boosting sales by encouraging patients to fill unnecessary opioid prescriptions. This incentivized patients to sell their medications on the black market.

B.C.’s interim guidelines, developed by the BC Centre on Substance Use at the government’s request, now require all new safer supply patients to begin with witnessed dosing.

But for existing patients, the guidelines say prescribers have discretion to determine whether to require witnessed dosing. The guidelines define an existing patient as someone who was dispensed prescription opioids within the past 30 days.

The guidelines say exemptions to witnessed dosing are permitted under “extraordinary circumstances,” where witnessed dosing could destabilize the patient or where a prescriber uses “best clinical judgment” and determines diversion risk is “very low.”

 for free to get BTN’s latest news and analysis – or donate to our investigative journalism fund.

Holes

Clinicians say the guidelines are deliberately vague.

Regenstreif described them as “wordy, deliberately confusing.” They enable prescribers to carry on as before, she says.

Lester agrees. Prescribers would be in compliance with these guidelines even if “none of their patients are transferred to witnessed dosing,” he said.

In his view, the guidelines will fail to meet their goal of curbing diversion.

And without witnessed dosing, diversion is nearly impossible to detect. “A patient can take one dose a day and sell seven — and this would be impossible to detect through urine testing,” Lester said.

He also says the guidelines do not remove the incentive for patients to sell their drugs to others. He cites estimates from Addiction Medicine Canada that clients can earn up to $20,000 annually by selling part of their prescribed supply.

“[Prescribed safer supply] can function as a form of basic income — except that the community is being flooded with addictive and dangerous opioids,” Lester said.

Regenstreif warns that patients who had been diverting may now receive unnecessarily high doses. “Now you’re going to give people a high dose of opioids who don’t take opioids,” she said.

She also says the guidelines leave out important details on adjusting doses for patients who do shift from take-home to witnessed dosing.

“If a doctor followed [the guidelines] to the word, and the patient followed it to the word, the patient would go into withdrawal,” she said.

The guidelines assume patients will swallow their pills under supervision, but many crush and inject them instead, Regenstreif says. Because swallowing is less potent, a higher dose may be needed.

“None of that is accounted for in this document,” she said.

Survival strategy

Some harm reduction advocates oppose a return to witnessed dosing, saying it will deter people from accessing a regulated drug supply.

Some also view diversion as a life-saving practice.

Diversion is “a harm reduction practice rooted in mutual aid,” says a 2022 document developed by the National Safer Supply Community of Practice, a group of clinicians and harm reduction advocates.

The group supports take-home dosing as part of a broader strategy to improve access to safer supply medications. In their document, they say barriers to accessing safer supply programs necessitate diversion among people who use drugs — and that the benefits of diversion outweigh the risks.

However, the risks — and harms — of diversion are mounting.

People can quickly develop a tolerance to “safer” opioids and then transition to more dangerous substances. Some B.C. teenagers have said the prescription opioid Dilaudid was a stepping stone to them using fentanyl. In some cases, diversion of these drugs has led to fatal overdoses.

More recently, a Nanaimo man was sentenced to prison for running a highly organized drug operation that trafficked diverted safer supply opioids. He exchanged fentanyl and other illicit drugs for prescription pills obtained from participants in B.C.’s safer supply program.

Recovery

Lester, of Addiction Medicine Canada, believes clinical discretion has gone too far. He says take-home dosing should be eliminated.

“Best practices in addiction medicine assume physicians prescribing is based on sound and thorough research, and ensuring that their prescribing does not cause harm to the broader community, as well as the patient,” he said.

“[Safer supply] for opioids fails in both these regards.”

He also says safer supply should only be offered as a short-term bridge to patients being started on proven treatments like buprenorphine or methadone, which help reduce drug cravings and manage withdrawal symptoms.

B.C.’s witnessed dosing guidelines say prescribers can discuss such treatment options with patients. However, the guidelines remain neutral on whether safer supply is intended as a transitional step toward longer-term treatment.

Regenstreif says this neutrality undermines care.

“[M]ost patients I’ve seen with opioid use disorder don’t want to have [this disorder],” she said. “They would rather be able to set goals and do other things.”

Oversight gaps

Currently, about 3,900 people in B.C. participate in the safer supply program — down from 5,200 in March 2023.

The B.C. government has not provided data on how many have been transitioned to witnessed dosing. Investigative journalist Rob Shaw recently reported that these data do not exist.

“The government … confirmed recently they don’t have any mechanism to track which ‘safe supply’ participants are witnessed and which [are] not,” said Elenore Sturko, a Conservative MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale, who has been a vocal critic of safer supply.

“Without a public report and accountability there can be no confidence.”

The BC Centre on Substance Use, which developed the interim guidelines, says it does not oversee policy decisions or data tracking. It referred Canadian Affairs’ questions to B.C.’s Ministry of Health, which has yet to clarify whether it will track and publish transition data. The ministry did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.

B.C. has also not indicated when or whether it will release final guidelines.

Regenstreif says the flawed guidelines mean many people may be misinformed, discouraged or unsupported when trying to reduce their drug use and recover.

“We’re not listening to people with lived experience of recovery,” she said.


This article was produced through the Breaking Needles Fellowship Program, which provided a grant to Canadian Affairs, a digital media outlet, to fund journalism exploring addiction and crime in Canada. Articles produced through the Fellowship are co-published by Break The Needle and Canadian Affairs.


Subscribe to Break The Needle

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Break The Needle provides news and analysis on addiction and crime in Canada.

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Addictions

More young men want to restrict pornography: survey

Published on July 11, 2025

By

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Andreas Wailzer

Nearly 64% of American men now believe online pornography should be more difficult to access, with even higher numbers of women saying the same thing.

A new survey has shown that an increasing number of young men want more restrictions on online pornography.

According to a survey by the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life, nearly 7 in 10 (69 percent) of Americans support the idea of making online pornography less accessible. In 2013, 65 percent expressed support for policies restricting internet pornography.

The most substantial increase in the support for restrictive measures on pornography could be observed in young men (age 18-24). In 2013, about half of young men favored restrictions, while 40 percent actively opposed such policies. In 2025, 64 percent of men believe accessing online pornography should be made more difficult.

The largest support for restriction on internet pornography overall could be measured among older men (65+), where 73 percent favored restrictions. An even larger percentage of women in each age group supported making online pornography less accessible. Seventy-two percent of young women (age 18-24) favored restriction, while 87 percent of women 55 years or older expressed support for less accessibility of internet pornography.

Viewing pornography is highly addictive and can lead to serious health problems. Studies have shown that children often have their first encounter with pornography at around 12 years old, with boys having a lower average age of about 10-11, and some encountering online pornography as young as 8. Studies have also shown that viewing pornography regularly rewires humans brains and that children, adolescents, and younger men are especially at risk for becoming addicted to online pornography.

According to Gary Wilson’s landmark book on the matter, “Your Brain on Porn,” pornography addiction frequently leads to problems like destruction of genuine intimate relationships, difficulty forming and maintaining real bonds in relationship, depression, social anxiety, as well as reduction of gray matter, leading to desensitization and diminished pleasure from everyday activities among many others.

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