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Front Burner Transcript for February 11, 2025

Host: Jayme Poisson

[Music: Theme]

JAYME POISSON: Hi, I'm Jayme 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 U.S. 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.

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DONALD TRUMP: 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...

JP: 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.

MANISHA KRISHNAN: Hi, Jamie.

JP: 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 2:30 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 czar is and what this person could be doing?

MANISHA KRISHNAN: So, we don't have a lot of detail exactly on what a fentanyl czar would be doing. What we do know is that they're putting into place sort of a lot of different measures, more surveillance, more intelligence. Sort of a joint task force working with the, with the U.S. More investigations into precursor chemicals being used to make fentanyl.

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VOICE: Fentanyl czar role will 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.

MANISHA KRISHNAN: And so, I assume that this fentanyl czar would just sort of be heading up all of those different moving parts.

JP: And those moving parts. Do we have any sense of what they are trying to accomplish, what they could be doing?

MANISHA KRISHNAN: 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 U.S., 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.

JP: Do you think any of what they've announced will bring about any kind of concrete change?

MANISHA KRISHNAN: I mean, I think that if you look at what the U.S. has done and this has been across both parties, so Democrats and Republicans, they've dumped billions and billions of dollars into, you know, disrupting the fentanyl supply chain interdiction, more fentanyl detection tools at the border, like so many of the things that Trudeau has promised, the U.S. 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 U.S. 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.

JP: So, essentially what you're saying is, is that the Mexican gangs replaced in many ways the, the fentanyl that was coming from China in recent years.

MANISHA KRISHNAN: Yes, exactly. Like, they get the precursor chemicals, many of which still come from China and other Asian countries, and they can synthesize it themselves.

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VOICE (THROUGH INTERPRETER): You know, 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.

VOICE 2 (THROUGH INTERPRETER): Production is quick. If a shipment is seized at the border, there's always more on the way.

MANISHA KRISHNAN: And what we're starting to see in Canada now is domestic labs that are doing the same, particularly in the western provinces.

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REPORTER: Cartels are known to smuggle truckloads of drugs across the U.S. 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.

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JP: 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 tariff crisis may actually help force a positive change in helping Canada slow the spread of fentanyl, right? Basically, that depending on how these policies are implemented, they could give the law enforcement more tools to investigate and prosecute, 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?

MANISHA KRISHNAN: 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, you know, maybe some of these things will have an impact. For example, going after organized crime in Canada and their routes of sort of money laundering. Perhaps that will make some sort of dent. But I just think that, you know, we have like 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.

JP: The idea that it could be replaced by something worse. Can you just elaborate for that for me on that?

MANISHA KRISHNAN: Sure. So, we saw, we've seen a couple of major crackdowns, you know, in our lifetime. For example, the prescription opioid crisis and, you know, in the U.S. in particular, but also in Canada, it was a thing. And we crackdown a lot on the prescription of pain pills. And that led a lot of people to use heroin. We crack 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 U.S. And some of those drugs include really strong illicit benzodiazepines, which, 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, you know, 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 U.S. and in Canada. And so, I worry about another super hard crackdown and what the unintended consequence will be in the drug supply.

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JP: 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 of mandatory minimum sentencing, and all of that. Trudeau legalized weed. He's promoted safer supply in supervised consumption site. His government allowed B.C. 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 this same Prime Minister is now talking about things like a fentanyl czar?

MANISHA KRISHNAN: I think what we've seen so, you know, 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 Poilievre.

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PIERRE POILIEVRE: 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.

MANISHA KRISHNAN: We're seeing it in the provinces, you know, Ontario, shutting down safe consumption sites.

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REPORTER 2: 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.

MANISHA KRISHNAN: B.C. 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.

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JUSTIN TRUDEAU: 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.

MANISHA KRISHNAN: 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.

JP: Yeah. I want to get into that with you more. First, can we just hone in on the B.C. pilot project for a minute? So, we've talked about this on the show before, but basically the Canadian government gave B.C. 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 2023, but by April 2024, NDP Premier David Eby announced a pretty major rollback.

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DAVID EBY: This amendment will make public drug use illegal in British Columbia.

JP: Is 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?

MANISHA KRISHNAN: 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, final thing in a set of what they saw as progressive drug policies that haven't really worked. And the thing is, decrim 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.

JP: 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. But 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, Minister, 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?

MANISHA KRISHNAN: 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, "Okay, well, we're going to ban safe injection sites, and we're going to make your neighborhoods 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.

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JP: We're seeing conservative leader Pierre Poilievre have 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.

MANISHA KRISHNAN: So, he is sort of capitalizing on this. I mean, he's kind of been all this anti- sort of harm reduction crusade for a while. He is going after, he's gone after individual safe supply doctors. He has 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.

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PIERRE POILIEVRE: 40 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.

MANISHA KRISHNAN: 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 on to 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.

JP: I just want to pick up on that 40-milligram number. Street 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, be quite a lot to be carrying around?

MANISHA KRISHNAN: 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.

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JP: Given the political and cultural moment we're in, how potent might that message be, though? From these guys, I just, talk me a little bit more about the mileage, right? Like, a lot of people really do connect to that message.

MANISHA KRISHNAN: Yeah, I think, 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, 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. And so, I think all of these things kind of feed into a poor misunderstanding of the drug crisis on the part of, on the part of the public. And now, you know, the doctors, the scientists who sort of are on the side of harm red--, 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, we're just kind of espousing what the science is. And now, everything has gotten a lot uglier in my point of view.

JP: How do you see this, this conversation ramping up in an election campaign in Canada? What do you think is going to happen?

MANISHA KRISHNAN: I mean, I think that Poilievre, I could see him using what Donald Trump is saying to sort of turn around and manufacture a 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.

JP: OK. Manisha, I want to thank you so much for this is really interesting.

MANISHA KRISHNAN: Thanks for having me on.

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JP: Alright. That's all for today. I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you all tomorrow.

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For transcripts of this series, please visit this page.

Reality-checking the tariff fentanyl crackdown - Transcript

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