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U.S. authorities say they have little indication that Canadian-made fentanyl is being smuggled south in significant quantities.
AKA the premise of the article.
I was always under the impression that most opioids were produced "legally" by under-regulated pharmaceutical corporations, but I'll be the first to admit I really know nothing about this stuff.
most opioids were produced “legally” by under-regulated pharmaceutical corporations
In the USA, that's not the case. There are obviously a lot of opioids produced by pharmaceutical corporations. These are the pills in pharmacies.
However, the opioids on the street are typically imported. They're a mixture of herion (naturally derived from poppies) and synthetic opioids. Most of the synthetics are much stronger than heroin. Fentanyl can be 50x stronger.
Most of the labs that produce synthetic opioids are in China. The drugs get shipped into the USA.
It's bad news if fentanyl labs are popping up in North America. This will only make it cheaper and more available.
My limited understanding from the news articles I've read is that they are easy to make in a quasi-legal way in the United States (sorry, I'm not familiar with how different it may be in Canada) because one can legally purchase the ingredients with ease from China. Therefore, the US has finally begun working with China (or I should probably say China has finally begun working with the US) to halt or limit that flow of ingredients.
So, what are we supposed to do with this information? Is this health related or just fuel for doomscrolling?
I'm not sure the health community is the best place for this article, but it is adjacently related. I would consider this topic to be more a combination of crime and politics.
Adjacent? I detox an awful lot of people who use opioids on the critical care hospital unit I work. I've had people come in with pneumonia, hypothermia, standard issue bacteremia and endocarditis. The opioid epidemic is definitely health related and a public health crisis.
Oh no, now they have "super" labs!