As fentanyl overdoses continue to plague communities across Canada, the RCMP’s national drug program coordinator says education and awareness-raising play an important role in the ongoing opioid crisis.
“We can’t arrest our way out of this crisis,” said Sgt. Luc Chicoine, an expert in the trafficking of synthetic drugs.
“Law enforcement is obviously our primary job, but we are also addressing the awareness of the issue. The public needs to be aware of the very serious hazards of the issue—it’s literally like playing Russian roulette.”
Chicoine said fentanyl, the synthetic opioid painkiller 100 times more powerful than morphine, is starting to show its “ugly face in more places across the country,” with a record 922 people dying in British Columbia last year due to opioid overdoses. Last year in Alberta, 323 deaths were linked to fentanyl and carfentanil, which can be lethal in quantities as small as a single grain of salt.
What has made Chicoine’s job so difficult is the steady flow of fentanyl and other forms of the illicit opioid from China, where synthesizing the drug is fairly simple and cheap. The relative ease with which it can enter Canada is creating an attractive racket among smaller or mid-range dealers across the country. And the profit margins are enormous.
