Large Fentanyl Labs Beginning to Appear in Canada
By Socalj 12/26/2023 11:49:00 AM
"Socalj" for Borderland Beat
At a rural property an hour outside Vancouver in October, Canadian police found 2.5 million doses of fentanyl and 528 gallons of chemicals in a shipping container and a storage unit. Six months earlier, they raided a home in a cookie-cutter Vancouver subdivision packed with barrels of fentanyl-making chemicals, glassware, and lab equipment.
Thousands of miles away outside Toronto, police in August found what is believed to be the largest fentanyl lab so far in Canada, hidden at a property 30 miles from the US border crossing at Niagara Falls, NY.
Investigators in Canada say the labs are producing fentanyl for domestic users and for export to Australia, New Zealand and, they assume, the United States.
“It’d be hard to believe it’s not occurring,” said Philip Heard, commander of the organized crime unit for police in Vancouver, a city hard-hit by fentanyl overdose deaths. “Most police leaders I’ve spoken to believe our production outstrips what our domestic demand is.”
The Canadian labs are a curveball for US authorities whose efforts to combat fentanyl are focused on the southern border with Mexico. US Customs and Border Protection has installed about $800 million worth of powerful scanning and detection equipment at land border crossings since 2019. Nearly all that technology has been deployed along the US southern border, where CBP confiscated nearly 27,000 pounds of fentanyl during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the most ever.
More:
https://www.borderlandbeat.com/2023/12/large-fentanyl-labs-beginning-to-appear.html
