Nearly 50,000 people have died of opioid overdoses in Canada since the crisis began in early 2016 through June 2024, with fentanyl increasingly blamed for the deaths, according to new data released Monday by Health Canada. .

The latest figures were released as US President-elect Donald Trump accuses the neighbor of not doing enough to stop the flow of fentanyl into the US and threatens to impose 25% tariffs on imported Canadian goods.

This synthetic opioid, fifty times stronger than heroin and a hundred times stronger than morphine, is causing a huge public health crisis in the US and, for five years now, Canada has become increasingly fertile ground for the production and export of fentanyl, without, however, playing a dominant role, according to experts.

Of the total number of overdoses in Canada from January to June this year, 79% were due to the use of fentanyl, up 39% from 2016, according to the country’s public health agency.

In the first six months of the year, authorities recorded an average of 21 deaths per day in the country of 40 million people, an 11% decrease compared to the same period in 2023, which was described as “encouraging”.

However, the indicators “remain at critically high levels,” Jaara Sachs, Canada’s Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, said in a statement, referring to the “tragic public health crisis” in the North American country. “There is no ‘one size fits all’ solution to this challenge,” he added.