‘They are selling it with no remorse’: A Mountie on the fake opioid crisis
It may seem baffling that some people will use counterfeit opioids, knowing both that the pills are fake and potentially deadly.
But people who consume fentanyl often don’t even see it as a drug, says Sgt. Luc Chicoine, the RCMP’s national drug program coordinator and an expert in the trafficking of synthetic drugs.
“It’s a sociological phenomena,” he says. “There’s the contention that it’s not a drug, just a tablet.”
The Citizen asked Chicoine for his insider’s view on counterfeit opioids, the fentanyl pipeline and the new breed of drug dealer.
Q: Do people who consume these pills know they’re fake?
A: These tablets mimic the appearance of the legal product. It started as a marketing tool. We have seen a lot of drugs that were pressed with a brand name and logo. But we are also seeing a new generation of drug consumers who have a large appetite for drugs in tablet form. There’s the feeling that you’re not a drug user because socially it’s OK to take medication. I was talking to some kids near Quebec City and they were telling me it’s OK to take tablets, because it’s not smoking or injecting something.
Q: So they know that the tablets can be deadly?
A: They do. But they think it’s not going to happen to them. It’s difficult when you’re in my shoes. I try to reach out and tell people: this is not what a doctor has prescribed.
Q: How are the users of this drug different from previous generations of drug users?
A: As scary as it sounds, there’s an appetite for trying new stuff. They’re on a quest to find something different. They want the high. Even if the high is “good,” they want something else. It’s like someone who buys a $100 bottle of wine, and they like it, but they want to try something else. Except it’s not a bottle of wine. It’s Russian roulette.
Q: How has the paradigm of selling and buying drugs changed?
A: Back in 2002 in B.C., we saw that fentanyl would be the drug of tomorrow. There was this guy who had the recipe to make it, but he couldn’t understand how to cut it properly. What stopped him from selling it was that he didn’t want to kill people. Q: And that consideration seems almost quaint now? A: There used to be a point of human contact at every level of a transaction. The connection doesn’t exist anymore. Now, chemicals are being produced by people with chemical knowhow for anyone who wants them, anywhere in the world. This is large-scale and detached. We’ve seen an organization sell 5,000 to 10,000 packages a week. They are selling it with no remorse.
Q: How does the pipeline work?
A: In Canada, abut 70 to 80 per cent of the fentanyl is coming from China. But there are other decoy trans-shipment points. It can go to five or six other countries first, so it’s hard to track. Someone in Germany could be selling drugs that have been made in China and trans-shipped through Australia and South Africa and Somalia.
Q: How do you disrupt the pipeline?
A: It’s extremely difficult. When fentanyl started to show its ugly face in 2010 and 2011, we said we need to sit down with Health Canada and doctors and pharmacists to manage prescriptions. It’s not prescriptions now. Fentanyl is here to stay because of the money that can be made. Production is fairly simple, with extremely limited chemical knowledge. We are reaching out to our international partners. A few weeks ago, China announced that it is adding carfentanil (a synthetic opioid 10,000 times more potent than morphine) to its schedule of controlled substances.
Q: What can be done?
A: There are the four pillars: One: enforcement. Two: treatment. Three: awareness of the demand side of it. The population as a whole has to be informed, from elementary school students to adults. Four: harm reduction. Supervised injection sites could provide some assistance. But we need outreach and resources on board at the same time. People who use need access to doctors, nurses and counsellors to get them out of the vicious cycle. This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.