President Donald Trump says rampant drug smuggling and overdose deaths are largely the fault of three international locations – Canada, China and Mexico – and he says powerful tariffs are the reply. However Canada performs virtually no position within the U.S. overdose disaster and drug deaths have been plummeting.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Photos/Getty Photos North America
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Andrew Harnik/Getty Photos/Getty Photos North America
President Donald Trump confirmed Thursday that new 25 p.c tariffs will go into impact March 4th towards two of the U.S.’s largest buying and selling companions. Trump additionally threatened so as to add a further 10 p.c tariff on Chinese language items and providers on the identical date.
Writing on Fact Social, Trump as soon as once more cited road medicine “pouring into our nation from Mexico and Canada at very excessive and unacceptable ranges” as a major cause for the coverage.
However federal knowledge from U.S. Customs and Border Safety present Canada performs virtually no position within the smuggling of fentanyl or different lethal road medicine into the U.S. Regardless of that truth, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised in December to step up efforts to safe the northern border.
“By deploying new helicopters, drones, and surveillance instruments. By including new scanners and sniffer canine groups to cease and seize fentanyl. By cracking down on the cash laundering that is funding cross-border crime,” Trudeau stated, detailing new coverage initiatives in a put up on social media.
Requested on Thursday about knowledge displaying Canada is not a major participant within the U.S. dependancy disaster, Trump argued that medicine are coming throughout the northern border with out being detected.
“They need to be apprehending far more, trigger lots comes by way of Canada and as Mexico will get stronger when it comes to the border it comes by way of Canada,” Trump stated, with out providing proof to again his declare.
In the meantime, fentanyl smuggling throughout the southern border from Mexico has plunged during the last yr with seizures in January 2025 down 50 p.c in contrast with a yr earlier. Avenue drug consultants say in lots of components of the U.S., the provision and efficiency of fentanyl has dropped considerably.
The variety of complete overdose deaths from road medicine has additionally fallen at an unprecedented tempo, down by practically 1 / 4 during the last yr.
Many states have seen a decline in deadly overdoses of between 30 and 50 p.c, in accordance with provisional knowledge from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention
“It is very, very thrilling to see,” stated Dr. Nora Volkow, head of the U.S. authorities’s Nationwide Institute on Drug Abuse, talking final week concerning the drop in drug deaths.
She famous that the decline in deaths linked to fentanyl, versus different road medicine, is even better. “From fentanyl it is a 30.6 p.c [drop] in a single yr, that is an enormous discount,” she stated.
Regardless of fast enhancements in a public well being disaster that has killed a whole bunch of 1000’s of People, road medicine stay a political flashpoint.
“The households of the victims are devastated and, in lots of cases, nearly destroyed,” Trump stated in his put up on social media. “We can’t permit this scourge to proceed to hurt the USA.”
Along with 25 p.c tariffs on items and providers from Canada and Mexico, Trump threatened China will face a further 10 p.c tariff on the identical date. China is a significant supply of commercial chemical compounds utilized by drug gangs to provide fentanyl, although the authorities of China has cracked down on suppliers during the last yr.
Whereas pointing to drug smuggling as a rationale for tariffs, Trump has additionally pardoned people who confronted federal drug expenses, together with Ross Ulbricht, creator of a darkish net web market known as Silk Street.
Ulbricht was convicted of distributing narcotics, amongst different expenses, and sentenced to life in jail in 2015.
Trump’s pardon of January 6 riot defendants has additionally been prolonged by the U.S. Justice Division to embody people dealing with drug-related expenses.