The latest data of Customs and Border Protection of the USA (CBP) show an increase in the amount of fentanyl seized near the North American border of the North with Canada, but the intercepted amounts remain a small fraction of what comes from Mexico.
The figures show us the border guards of us transported in a relatively lowercase amount of the mortal drug in the first months of fiscal year 2024-25, often informing 0.5 kilograms or less seized, before a jump in April and May, when the officials captured six and 14 kilograms, respectively, near the Canadian limit.
These busts mean that more fentanyl has been seized along the northern border so far this year than in 2023-24. Between October 2024 and May, the United States has captured 26 kilograms compared to 19.5 kilograms taken in the previous 12 months.
On the border between the southwest of the United States with Mexico, in comparison, so far the officials have confiscated about 3,700 kilograms of fentanil in this fiscal year, sufficient product to potentially kill hundreds of thousands of drug users and easily dwarf what officials discovered from Canada.
A CBP spokesman did not respond to a request for comments for this story.
Border data does not offer details about how or where fentanyl was seized, or why there was a notable increase near the northern limit in the last two months. What is known is that there were seven “seizure events” in April and five in May.
In an interview with CBC News, Fentanyl Tsar of Canada, Kevin Brosseau, said he is concerned about Americans who receive more drugs, saying that a single gram captured anywhere near the border is too much.
Brosseau said that it is possible that, with the approach of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, on the southern border, some criminal elements may be resorting to Canada.
“If additional pressure is exerted on one side, they will seek to go to another place,” Brosseau said about the posters that move these drugs.
“We have to be inhospitable,” he said, promising to continue an aggressive approach to intercept drugs and those who assign them. The government of Prime Minister Mark Carney recently introduced legislation that would help do that exactly.
“We are really focused on closing them,” Brosseau said about criminals who commit drugs. “Anything that goes south from Canada should stop.”
While he is concerned about the slight rebound in Fentanilo convulsions, Brosseau said a new report from the Manhattan Institute, a group of headquarters based in the United States, showed that Canada has not been the main provider of fentanil to the United States, far from it.
From 2013 to 2024, 99 percent of the pills and 97 percent of fentanyl in the form of dust captured in large seizures on the EE terrestrial borders. Uu. They came from Mexico, the researchers found, and “large” were defined as more than one kilogram of dust or more than 1,000 pills, steriles indicative of wholesale traffic.
“The biggest source of this problem for the United States is Mexico and this is a more study that confirms that,” said Brosseau.
“It replicates what we have been saying from the first moment,” he said.
The report found that the pattern of Mexico is a huge source of fentanyl for the United States has remained in recent years, despite Trump’s claims that the drug is “arriving” from Canada and justifies punitive tariffs. Carney is locked in negotiations to obtain border tariffs related to Trump’s fentanyl, and the others, raised at the end of the month.
In 2023-24, American counties on the border with Mexico, which represent 2.35 percent of the American population, represented approximately 40 percent of the great seizures of Fentanyl, the researchers found.
Meanwhile, the counties along the border with Canada, which contain 3.1 percent of the population of the United States, represented less than 2.5 percent of the large seizures.
While the president of the United States, Donald Trump, threatens the tariffs against Canada for the fentanyl that crosses the border to the United States, the data of the New Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) reveal drugs and weapons that are reached by Canada from the United States, with the amount of drugs seized by Canadian officers who double in two years.
In an interview with CBC News, Jonathan Caulkins, professor at Heinz College from the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and co -author of that research report, said: “The things we take on the northern border are a very small part” of the United States supply.
“Any Fentanyl cross from Canada to the United States?
While Trump and his officials indicate an increase in fentanyl seizures on the northern border, Caulkins said there is a “gigantic increase in the percentage because it is starting from an extremely low base.”
In 2023-24, for example, CBP captured less than one kilogram, before taking around 19.5 kilograms the following year. That works with an increase of approximately 1,850 percent, a striking figure that obscures how little it is really being taken.
The US Secretary of National Security. UU., Kristi Noem, increased those percentage increases during a recent visit to Michigan, where he said that former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was a “train crash” and that Trump and his team “do not lower their guard.”
While traffic figures are relatively small, that does not mean that Canada is a fentanyl free zone, Caulkins said.
After all, more than 52,000 deaths of apparent opioid toxicity between January 2016 and December 2024 in Canada were reported, according to federal data. In 2024, 74 percent of those deaths involved fentanyl.
At the end of last year, the police in BC broke a call “super laboratory” of drugs that the authorities believe that it was producing fentanyl for national and American markets. Federal researchers confiscated 54 kilograms of fentanyl.
“For both Canada and the United States, the scale of death is surprising. I don’t want to make it look like that is, ‘hey, just relax,” Caulkins said.
“But the movement between our two borders is not really important history. We seem to suffer this fentanyl problem that none of us are causing.”
Caulkins said that Canada and the United States would be well served when working even more together to try to take strong measures against fentanyl, saying that an antagonist approach is counterproductive.
“If you really care to control your border, the most important thing is to work cooperatively with the country on the other side,” he said.
That is what Brosseau is trying to do.
Brosseau said that in his five months at work, he has helped foster more intelligence sharing between the two countries, which has helped lead more seizures here.
Last month, the Provincial Police of Ontario reported that the recent work application work resulted in the seizure of about 43.5 kilograms of fentanyl, equivalent to approximately 435,000 potentially lethal doses of street level.
“Apparently, every week there is another significant bust. I think that speaks of the fact that there is a greater intensity in the effort,” said Brosseau.
And the Tsar said that he speaks every business day to the National Drug Control Policy Office of the United States, which directly informs Trump, and the Americans there have shown “deep appreciation and recognition” of Canada’s efforts to handle the fentanyl.
“Canada is in that. We are doing our part to be a good neighbor,” he said.
