Canadian officers have dismantled what they say was the largest, most sophisticated drug lab in the nation's history, seizing a massive cache of weapons and drugs intended for international and domestic distribution.
Police called the facility described by police officers as a drug “superlab” with enough fentanyl and precursor chemicals to produce more than 95.5 million possibly lethal doses of fentanyl, an amount that “could have taken the lives of every Canadian, at least twice over,” said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's David Teboul, the Washington Post reports. Some 54 kilograms of fentanyl and 390 kilograms of methamphetamine, in addition to “massive amounts of precursor chemicals” and smaller amounts of cocaine, MDMA and cannabis, were discovered in Falkland, a small community in British Columbia. Police said the lab was responsible for the production of “unprecedented quantities” of fentanyl and methamphetamine.
With the help of the Canada Borders Services Agency, investigators were able to seize 310 kilograms of methamphetamine before it left Canada. Investigators found evidence that a drug production method used by Mexican cartels was likely to have been used in the lab, describing it as the first time they had seen this method in Western Canada. Canada and the U.S. have been grappling with record numbers of opioid overdose deaths. The spread of drug labs in Canada poses a challenge to U.S. drug enforcement, where the majority of resources are focused along the southern border with Mexico. Investigators said seized 89 firearms and a cache of small explosive devices, ammunition, suppressors, high-capacity magazines, body armor and $360,000. The main suspect, Gaganpreet Randhawa, was charged with drug and firearms offenses. In Canada, more than 42,500 people have died of drug overdoses since 2016.
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