Big Lies and Border Fictions: How Fentanyl Disinformation Threatens U.S.-Canada Relations
- Evelyn J. Kim
- Mar 16
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 19
When politicians announce aggressive policies, they often attach grotesque justifications. These fictions and fallacies are meant to remain in our minds, taking up space and allowing us to accept violence without question. This is the mystique of the big lie, as Hitler explained in Mein Kampf. Tell a lie so big, so preposterous, he advised, that people will not believe you would deceive them on such a scale. His biggest lie was that of an international Jewish conspiracy: something that could always be blamed, something that would always relieve Germans of responsibility. Today’s big lies? Canada attacked the United States by sending masses of fentanyl across the border. And Canada doesn’t really exist as a legitimate nation.
Fentanyl is undeniably a serious problem - the third wave of America’s opioid crisis after OxyContin and heroin. It kills people, especially young Americans, in alarming numbers. But it is also a distinctly American problem. America has the highest rate of opioid deaths, and it’s not only because we’re consumers; we also make up the vast majority of smugglers. Our healthcare system guides people toward opioids while lacking the long-term care needed to prevent addiction.
This crisis began with an American company's moneymaking scheme - Purdue Pharma pushed OxyContin, creating a wave of addiction that continued with heroin and has now reached fentanyl. The demand for fentanyl is American. People living at the epicenters of this addiction crisis tend to vote Republican; without them, Trump would never have become president in the first place. These politicians see this suffering as a political resource - a wellspring of misery that can be directed against any enemy of choice.
The message has become clear: understand American addictions as attacks from outside. This elevates irresponsibility to national doctrine - someone besides Americans must be blamed for America's addictions. Now it's become foreign policy, as we flail for increasingly nonsensical stories like "Canada is to blame." Some politicians have misled the public about addiction, blaming "poison coming across our border" rather than addressing domestic factors. Instead of becoming advocates for prevention or recovery, they've championed blaming others - behaviors they themselves associate with addiction. This contradicts their own stated philosophy that Americans should take personal responsibility rather than blaming others for their failings.
Just to be clear, other countries are involved in the fentanyl crisis. Blaming Canada represents extreme bad faith. When politicians group Canada and Mexico together, claiming fentanyl is "pouring in" through both countries, they're not telling the truth. The entire amount smuggled in fiscal year 2024 would fit in a single suitcase. Canada wasn't even mentioned in the official 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment by the DEA.
Canada has been a reliable friend and ally. Casting it as the villain is strange and unsupported by evidence. This portrayal is a conspiracy theory with no empirical basis but firmly rooted in the need to blame someone else for what Americans themselves have done. The rhetoric associating tariffs with fentanyl represents an overflow of misinformation and blatant lies. Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested these tariffs are steps in a policy designed to soften Canada for annexation, following statements made publicly and privately about Canada becoming "the fifty-first state."
The notion that "Canada is not real" exemplifies the complacent lies imperialists tell themselves before beginning wars of aggression. The fentanyl slander allows Americans to shift responsibility to a chosen enemy while entering a world of geopolitical fantasy. By recognizing these big lies for what they are and speaking truths, we can prevent North American catastrophe before it begins.
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