Illegally manufactured fentanyl is a national tragedy – one that has taken hundreds of thousands of American lives and almost the same proportion of Canadian lives. Addressing the crisis deserves serious, data-driven policymaking. That’s why it’s troubling that recent rhetoric from the White House has singled out Canada as a significant source of fentanyl flowing into the United States, even citing this as one reason for the application of tariffs on Canadian goods.
Let’s be clear: the data do not support that claim.
In a new report I co-authored for the Manhattan Institute, we analyzed nearly 200,000 heroin and fentanyl seizures across the U.S. from 2013 to 2024 as recorded in multiagency enforcement task force data. We focused on large seizures – over one kilogram of powder or more than 1,000 pills – because those quantities are likely tied to wholesale trafficking, not personal use. Our findings reinforce what law enforcement and drug policy experts have long understood based on other data: the overwhelming majority of fentanyl entering the U.S. comes through the southern border, not from the north.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Globe and Mail (paywall)
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Jonathan P. Caulkins is the Stever University Professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College. This piece is based off of a recent report.
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