What Do Tariffs and the War On Pain Patients Have in Common? Fentanyl-Phobia

By Crystal Lindell

Did you know that there’s a drug that kills 480,000 people in the United States annually? Based on years of headlines, you might assume that the drug in question is fentanyl, but you’d be wrong. It’s actually tobacco.

There’s another drug that kills 178,000 people in the United States annually. It's called alcohol. 

Meanwhile, illicit fentanyl, the street drug everyone loves to be scared of, was involved in the deaths of 73,654 people in 2022.

Any death is too many, but those statistics highlight how disproportionately we focus on fentanyl as the deadly drug we should fear most. 

For years now, overdoses involving fentanyl have been used to justify denying pain patients access to much safer prescription opioids, such as hydrocodone. Now it’s also being used as an excuse for new tariffs against Canada, Mexico and China, which went into effect this week. 

During his speech Tuesday night, President Donald Trump justified the tariffs by saying: “They’ve allowed fentanyl to come into our country at levels never seen before, killing hundreds of thousands of our citizens and many very young, beautiful people, destroying families. Nobody has ever seen anything like it.”

The situation shows how many aspects of our daily lives are impacted by the War on Drugs, whether it’s a doctor’s visit or economic policy. It also highlights just how much the war is used to justify whatever economic, healthcare, and law enforcement policies our government wants at any given time. 

Because, of course, if any of this was actually about saving lives, then we would be focusing on the drugs that kill more people than fentanyl: alcohol and tobacco. Those are both still sold over the counter though. 

Instead, our leaders lean on whipping up a moral panic about fentanyl. The end result is the same, whether that moral panic is used against patients or neighboring countries: it causes unnecessary pain and suffering. 

The headline on an NBC News article calls out the fact that the tariffs probably won’t reduce fentanyl deaths: “Trump says tariffs were enacted to curb fentanyl, but U.S. overdose deaths are already declining.”

The article also points out that nearly all confiscated fentanyl is seized at the US-Mexican border. In the current fiscal year, just 10 pounds of fentanyl have been recovered at the Canadian border, compared to 5,400 pounds at the Mexican border.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is under no illusion that fentanyl deaths are the real reason for the tariffs. MarketWatch reported that Trudeau called Trump’s rationale for using tariffs to stop the miniscule amount of fentanyl coming from Canada "completely bogus." 

"We have to fall back on the one thing he has said repeatedly – that what he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that will make it easier to annex us," Trudeau said. "We are, of course, open to starting negotiations, (but) let us not fool ourselves about what he seems to be wanting."

Stepping back a bit, it’s important to note that the fentanyl bogeyman is just the latest facet of the War on Drugs, which the United States has been fighting and losing since 1971. The tariffs highlight how little the so-called war has ever been based on actually helping anyone. 

It would be wise to be skeptical anytime the War on Drugs is used as a justification for government policy. Just because a government claims something is the reason for a law or policy, that does not mean that that is the actual reason. That applies to tariffs, as well as limiting opioid pain medication. 

Skepticism should be applied to all drug-related policy in the United States. 

Trump’s Tariffs Won’t Stop Illicit Drug Use

By Rodney Coates

Americans consume more illicit drugs per capita than anyone else in the world; about 6% of the U.S. population uses them regularly.

One such drug, fentanyl – a synthetic opioid that’s 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine – is the leading reason U.S. overdose deaths have surged in recent years. While the rate of fentanyl overdose deaths has dipped a bit recently, it’s still vastly higher than it was just five years ago.

Ending the fentanyl crisis won’t be easy. The U.S. has an addiction problem that spans decades – long predating the rise of fentanyl – and countless attempts to regulate, legislate and incarcerate have done little to reduce drug consumption. Meanwhile, the opioid crisis alone costs Americans tens of billions of dollars each year.

With past policies having failed to curb fentanyl deaths, President Donald Trump is turning to another tool to fight America’s drug problem: trade policy.

During his presidential campaign, Trump pledged to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico if they didn’t halt the flow of drugs across U.S. borders, and on China if it didn’t do more to crack down on the production of chemicals used to make fentanyl. Trump reiterated his plan on his first day back in office, and on Feb. 1, he made good on that threat, imposing tariffs on all three counties and citing fentanyl as a key reason.

Speaking as a professor who studies social policy, I think both fentanyl and the proposed import taxes represent significant threats to the U.S. While the human toll of fentanyl is undeniable, the real question is whether tariffs will work – or worsen what’s already a crisis.

In 2021, more than 107,000 Americans died from overdoses – the most ever recorded – and nearly seven out of 10 deaths involved fentanyl or similar synthetic opioids.

In 2022, fentanyl was killing an average of 200 people each day. And while fentanyl deaths declined slightly in 2023, nearly 75,000 Americans still died from synthetic opioids that year. In March of that year – the most recent for which full-year data on overdose deaths is available – the then-secretary of homeland security declared fentanyl to be “the single greatest challenge we face as a country.”

Drug Regulation Doesn’t Work

But history shows that government efforts to curb drug use often have little success.

The first real attempt to regulate drugs in the U.S. occurred in 1890, when, amid rampant drug abuse, Congress enacted a law taxing morphine and opium. In the years that followed, cocaine use skyrocketed, rising 700% between 1890 and 1902. Cocaine was so popular, it was even found in drinks such as Coca-Cola, from which it got its name.

This was followed by a 1909 act banning the smoking of opium, and, in 1937, the “Marihuana Tax Act.” The most comprehensive package of laws was instituted with the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which classified drugs into five categories based on their medical uses and potential for abuse or dependence.

A year later, then-President Richard Nixon launched the “War on Drugs” and declared drug abuse as “public enemy No. 1.” And in 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, directing US$1.7 billion for drug enforcement and control.

These policies have generally failed to curb drug supply and use, while also causing significant harm to people and communities of color. For example, between 1980 and 1997, the number of incarcerations for nonviolent drug offenses went from 50,000 to 400,000. But these policies hardly put a dent in consumption. The share of high school seniors using drugs dipped only slightly over the same period, from 65% in 1980 to 58% in 1997.

Tariffs Can Backfire

In short, past U.S. efforts to reduce illegal drug use haven’t been especially effective. Now, it looks like the U.S. is shifting toward using tariffs – but research suggests that those will not lead to better outcomes either, and could actually cause considerable harm.

America’s experiments with tariffs can be traced back to the founding era with the passage of the Tariff Act of 1789. This long history has shown that tariffs, industrial subsidies and protectionist policies don’t do much to stimulate broad economic growth at home – but they raise prices for consumers and can even lead to global economic instability.

History also shows that tariffs don’t work especially well as negotiating tools, failing to effect significant policy changes in target countries. Economists generally agree that the costs of tariffs outweigh the benefits.

Over the course of Trump’s first term, the average effective tariff rate on Chinese imports went from 3% to 11%. But while imports from China fell slightly, the overall trade relationship didn’t change much: China remains the second-largest supplier of goods to the U.S.

The tariffs did have some benefit – for Vietnam and other nearby countries with relatively low labor costs. Essentially, the tariffs on China caused production to shift, with global companies investing billions of dollars in competitor nations.

This isn’t the first time Trump has used trade policy to pressure China on fentanyl – he did so in his first term. But while China made some policy changes in response, such as adding fentanyl to its controlled substances list in 2019, fentanyl deaths in the U.S. continued to rise. Currently, China still ranks as the No. 1 producer of fentanyl precursors, or chemicals used to produce illicit fentanyl. And there are others in the business: India, over that same period, has become a major producer of fentanyl.

Drugs have been pervasive throughout U.S. history. And when you investigate this history and look at how other nations are dealing with this problem rather than criminalization, the Swiss and French have approached it as an addiction problem that could be treated. They realized that demand is what fuels the illicit market. And as any economist will tell you, supply will find a way if you don’t limit the demand. That’s why treatment works and bans don’t.

The U.S. government’s ability to control the production of these drugs is limited at best. The problem is that new chemical products will continually be produced. Essentially, failure to restrict demand only places bandages on hemorrhaging wounds. What the U.S. needs is a more systematic approach to deal with the demand that’s fueling the drug crisis.

Rodney Coates, PhD, is a public sociologist and Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at Miami University

This article originally appeared in The Conversation and is republished with permission.