Fentanyl Crisis: A National Security Matter

The complexity of the current threat landscape associated with terrorism and criminal networks continues to be a top national and global security agenda item. Amongst the global security challenges, synthetic drugs constitute one of the most significant drug problems worldwide (UNODC in Global smart update: fentanyl and its analogous—50 years on, 2017 [54]). Fentanyl and non-pharmaceutical fentanyls (NPFs) have moved beyond being a concern to emerging as a national and global security matter. In 2015, more than 52,000 Americans (144/day) died from drug overdose. As reported by Chester (Fentanyl: the next wave of the opioid crisis, 2017 [9]), 63% of overdoses involved opioids whereby they are having ‘…a considerable impact on public health and public safety in communities across the United States’. In Canada, the Fentanyl-related deaths has markedly increased across British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec, ranging from a doubling to 20-fold increase from 2009 to 2014 (CCENDU in Deaths involving fentanyl in Canada, 2009–2014, 2015 [4]). This increasing trend is noted internationally with increasing mortality in Australia (Roxburgh et al. in Drug Alcohol Rev 32:269–275, 2013 [48]) and the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden) (Simonsen et al. in Forensic Sci Int 248:172–180, 2015 [50]). Richmond (An introduction to systems thinking. High Performance Systems, Inc. NH: Hanover, 2001 [46]) argues that ‘The way we think is outdated. As a result, the way we act creates problems, and then we are ill-equipped to address them because of the way we think’. His argument stems from the ‘…fact that we have been applying the same set of non-solutions to the crucial social problems such as drugs, poverty and crime for most of the last fifty years without any positive results’. This chapter examines the national and global fentanyl crisis and introduces a holistic perspective of the problem space that leverages social innovation and macro-social analysis (Boivin in Networks and network analysis for defence and security. Springer, Berlin, 2014 [1]; Masys in Exploring the security landscape—non-traditional security challenges. Springer, Berlin, 2016 [37]) to examine the public health and criminal dimensions.