The video call is granulated, but it is clear that the person on the phone is trying to sell: illicit drugs, packaged and ready to be sent to Canada.
The seller, named Kim, says he sells cocaine, methamphetamine, mdma and nitazenes, a powerful kind of synthetic opioids of which most people have never heard speak, but that it can be up to 43 times more powerful than fentanil.
“You can kill people, right? So, I just want to make sure I know,” says the CBC journalist in a secret phone call.
“That is the game,” replies the seller.
The seller is one of the 14 people with which the Visual Research Unit of CBC spoke in text messages and telephone calls after finding them through ads published by users in the main social media platforms such as LinkedIn, X and Reddit and electronic commerce websites that announce nitazenes for sale.
A visual research of CBC News tracks how mortal and super powerful synthetic opioids nitazenes arrive in Canada, where they have killed hundreds of people. With the open source support of Bellingcat researchers, CBC finds hundreds of ads for Nitazen Online, published on social networks and electronic commerce sites, and talks to sellers behind them to expose how these mortal drugs are introduced to contraband to Canada.
These ads, published outdoors, contain contact information that puts CBC with drug traffickers who claim to be part of international criminal networks. CBC did not buy any illegal substance.
Nitazenos, who have never been approved for medical use and are medications in Annex 1 under the Law of Drugs and Controlled Substances, have appeared more and more in drug busts throughout Canada.
Last year, two laboratory busts only in Quebec may have represented more than one million pharmaceutical pills of falsified oxycodone, which were actually protonitazepyne, a type of nitazen, or “analog”, according to the RCMP.
Nitazenes has killed hundreds of Canadians in the last four years, according to data collected by the Visual CBC Research Unit of Forensics throughout the country.
“[North Americans] Not only nitazine consumers, but they really have the biggest problem in relation to the number of deaths, “said Alex Krotulski, director of the Foreign Science Research and Education Center in Pennsylvania, a toxicology laboratory that tries nitazen in Canada and the US.
“This is really becoming an established drug class of new synthetic opioids.”
A more powerful
Nitazenos are not as popular as fentanyl and their analogues, but offer a more powerful maximum, which makes them attractive to drug traffickers. It is possible that drug users do not even know that they are consuming nitazenes, which can be mixed in counterfeit pills.
“It angry with me,” said Christian Boivin, a resident of Montreal, after CBC shared his findings with him. Boivin’s 15 -year -old son Mathis He died of Nitazen overdose last year after consuming what he thought were oxycodone pills. “[These sellers] Do not be aware. They are bad people and they just want money … They don’t care about lives. “
Mathis’s story is not an isolated case. Because public guidance statistics group them as “non -fentanyl opioids”, CBC communicated with forensics in the 13 provinces and territories to compile data on the total number of deaths of nitazenes in Canada.
The data received were incomplete, for example, Manitoba only provided statistics by 2024, but indicates that almost 400 deaths have been attributed directly to Nitazenes or it is suspected that it involves Nitazenos since 2021. The true number of deaths is probably even greater.
“I guarantee that due to the variability in toxicology tests, the variability in practices and variability in the availability of funds … [the number of deaths] It is not reported, “said Donna Papsun, Forensic Toxicologist in Nms Labs, based in Pennsylvania, who proves shows from all Canada.” If they are not looking for it, you can’t find it. “
Going through the available data, the greatest amount of deaths were in Alberta, with 121 since 2021, followed by Quebec with 91 and BC with 81.
“We are concerned that this continues to increase as a continuous threat,” said Dan Anson, general director of Intelligence and Research for the Canada Border Services Agency.
Sellers reveal how to smuggle drugs
One of the ways in which Nitaznes arrives in Canada is through vendors that are advertised on social networks publishing images of superimposed powders with contact information.
“Online ads are how this market works at this time,” Anson told CBC.
Visual Research Unit of CBC, with the support of the open source Researchers in BellingcatThey found hundreds of ads in publications generated by the user for more than a dozen types of nitazenos on social media platforms, including X, Reddit, LinkedIn, Behance (a graphic design website owned by Adobe) and electronic commerce websites in India, such as Indian exporters, dial4trade and tradeindia. They emerged from the dozens on Google Image Searches for keywords related to Nitazeno analogues.
It often took minutes to receive an answer after responding to an online ad. The sellers rushed to share videos of their laboratories and products, even offering a step -by -step guide on how drugs would send to Canada: first, labeled the packages, then hiding them inside the PlayStation 5S, they deflated basketball, teeras and packages of Chinese herbs. Then they would be sent by messaging or by mail.
Previous reports On the subject in the United Kingdom, even drugs hid in dog food and catering supplies.
A seller told a CBC reporter that Nitazene’s shipments could even surrender the same day from Detroit, Michigan, Windsor, Ontario.
“You will see some fairly strange levels of creativity when it comes to importing illegal drugs,” said Anson. “They come from online markets … and they will go through the postal messenger.”
When he was contacted by CBC for comments, LinkedIn, Reddit and Adobe eliminated the publications that contain ads that were marked. X did not respond to a request for comments and marked publications were still live at the time of publication.
A Google spokesman said it complies with valid legal elimination requests and authorities.
Dial4 TRADE AND EXPORTERS INDIA, two electronic commerce platforms based in India where ads were found, they told CBC that they added restrictions to block Nitazeno ads. Tradeindia, another platform, said he eliminated the ads marked.
A global network
It was made clear that nitazen vendors extend all over the world, and are not always who or where they intend to be online.
On the electronic commerce site, next to the heading “Etonitazene Powder”, there was an image of a brown powder offered by a Chinese biotechnology company. On its website, the company says “nothing is above human health.”
It has an address that appears in Shanghai that does not exist on Google Maps. But the company quickly explained why the address did not exist when asked in a secret phone call.
“It is very dangerous to sell in China,” said a man who went for Jerry to a CBC reporter during a call with a Mandarin translator. Jerry said he and his partners needed a false direction to make the company seem real, but also for Chinese authorities to not discover them.
Videos within drug laboratories abroad
To show that they were legitimate distributors, they shared videos of their laboratory, and said the name of the CBC reporter and the date to test the authenticity of the video, and showed us past shipments to Canada. They even offered to send samples of nitazenes free of charge to prove purity.
But the vendors were not just from China. CBC spoke with the vendors who claimed to send from the United States, the United Kingdom, India, even the Philippines.
During the video, a seller who said they are from the United Kingdom showed shipping records that said they were from drugs that went to Grande Prairie, Alta.
Like any global trade, some Nitazen sellers said they were fighting with the impact of US tariffs.
A person who represents a company called Umesh Enterprises who claimed to be in India said that Nitaznes “came from India … due to the problems that occur between the United States and China with tariffs,” they said during a call. “There has been a lot of block of China, so … let’s go with India.”
The speaker, like many of the vendors, acknowledged that importing Nitazenes to Canada is illegal and knew how lethals these synthetic opioids can be.
“[These sellers] They don’t care how many people eliminating or how many families hurt, “said Dale Sutherland, a resident of Toronto, whose 22 -year -old son died of an overdose that involves a Nitazeno in 2022.
“It’s very frustrating … we have to have more regulations, stricter sanctions.”
In response to CBC’s findings, Fentanyl Tsar of Canada, Kevin Brosseau, said in a statement the “appearance of nitazenes and other highly powerful synthetic opioids, is something that worries me and I am taking myself very seriously.”
Brosseau indicated bill C-2 recently presented from the Federal Government, or Strong border lawthat will give Canada more authority to open the mail and eliminate barriers to the application of the law that inspects the mail during an investigation.
Critics of the proposed law say that it would reduce civil liberties. This month, a coalition of more than 300 civil society groups demanded full retirement of bill C-2, warning that it would expand government surveillance.
Do you have any advice on this story? Contact Eric Szeto: eric.szeto@cbc.ca
