Mexican ‘Narco’ Fentanyl Crisis Explodes In Canada

The public health crisis due to drug abuse has reached Canada, where fentanyl pills trafficked by Mexican cartels have already been detected.

Canada faces health crisis due to Mexican drug fentanyl

Since 2018, the Canadian government has directly supplied addicts with the doses they need to avoid illicit drug trafficking; However, this policy has generated a problem of abuse in thousands of people, mainly young people, but also in older people.

This, in turn, has led to flooding cities like Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and Manitoba with homeless people, who have lost everything due to their addiction.

According to HealthCanada data from June of this year, 82 per cent of opioid overdose deaths in Canada since 2017 were related to fentanyl.

A study carried out by the organization Get Your Drugs Tested revealed that, on the streets of Vancouver, narcotics are distributed with inscriptions alluding to the Northeast cartel, based mainly in Tamaulipas, Mexico.

Get Your Drugs Tested is an initiative endorsed by Vancouver CoastalHealth, the region’s health authority that offers a drug testing service and aims to prevent overdoses in the community.

In March 2024, an anonymous citizen of Vancouver gave the Association a dark green pill that had the inscriptions CDN on one side and the number 80 on the other side.

CDN refers to the Northeast cartel, while 80 is a legend that criminal groups put on their pills to pass them off as legitimate drugs. In that case, the sample was disguised as an 80 milligram dose of oxycodone.

After a rapid test, Get Your Drugs Tested confirmed that this pill had tested positive for fentanyl and benzodiazepine.

In 2016, the province of British Columbia, whose main capital is Vancouver and is one of Canada’s largest cities, declared a state of public health emergency after fentanyl overdoses killed 200 people in just three months.

By 2023, the province will record a record of more than 2,500 overdose deaths. An estimated 225,000 people use illegal drugs in British Columbia, and experts say a supply of toxic street drugs laced with fentanyl and other compounds significantly increases the risk of mortality.

Canada legalized the consumption of marijuana since 2018, with the aim of keeping profits out of the hands of criminals and organized crime and thus reducing crime.

However, experts affirm that this measure cannot yet be declared a right or wrong because this opening to legal drug consumption has substantially increased the number of mental problems, hospital admissions and deaths due to overdose and extreme addiction, according to a study by the medical journal Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ).

The Canadian government created so-called Supervised Consumption Sites (SCS) that provide a safe and clean space for people to carry their own drugs, prescribed by the same public health system.

From 2017 to January 2024, the Supervised Consumption Sites have reached a total of 4 million 600 thousand visits, of which 69 percent correspond to men between 20 and 59 years old; 24 percent to women of all ages and the rest to older adults.

Reports from the Ministry of HealthCanada indicate that fentanyl is one of the most legally administered substances, in almost 50 percent of cases.

John Miller, a retired father who lives in the province of Ontario, and who in his youth was addicted to heroin, marijuana and fentanyl, assured that the majority of drugs sold at government-authorized outlets do not have the same quality as illegal drugs, therefore addicts are always looking for purer drugs on the black market.

“Unfortunately, many die of overdose because they do not know what they are consuming or its origin,” Miller commented.

For their part, a group of mothers of people who died from overdoses formed the Mom Stops the Harm association, which has repeatedly asked the government to coordinate efforts to change the drug consumption policy.

“We challenge laws and policies that cause harm, including those laws that continue to drive unregulated drug poisoning in Canada. We demand the end of the failed war on drugs and impose an efficient prevention and treatment mechanism.”

Pill addiction lives in the most important cities in Canada

Source: Milenio