Ezra Levant reveals China’s Hong Kong police—led by Chan Tung and Karen Seng—are adopting Canada’s Justin Trudeau’s tactics, rebranding PR efforts to label critics as "misinformation" while monitoring online dissent. A Toronto Star article falsely claiming death threats against the unvaccinated was debunked, yet media amplified outrage over non-violent protests, ignoring physical attacks on journalists like Rebel News reporters Alexis and David Menzies. Levant warns Canada may expand censorship laws, mirroring U.S./UK disinformation commissioners, as Trudeau’s government or NDP support persists, while linking Key West’s August 13th cocaine seizure to fentanyl trafficking via Chinese-supplied materials and Mexican cartels. The trend signals a global crackdown on dissent under the guise of public safety. [Automatically generated summary]
Their police are no longer calling capitalists, you know, capitalist running dogs or enemy of the party.
They're using Trudeau's language.
They're calling them disinformation spreaders.
It's quite amazing to see the Chinese police copy Trudeau's language.
I'll take you through it.
But first, let me invite you to subscribe to Rebel News Plus.
That's a video version of this podcast.
Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe, eight bucks a month.
You get my weeknight show, so that's 20 times a month.
Plus, we have four weekly shows.
You add it all up.
That's 36 episodes a month for just eight bucks.
More importantly, that's how we survive, you know.
We don't take any government money.
Please go to RebelNewsPlus.com and click subscribe.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, China copies Trudeau's language about peaceful political critics.
It's August 16th, and this is the Ezra Vance Show.
shame on you you censorious bug hey look at this story from the Hong Kong free press one of the few voices left in that city that's not controlled by the Chinese Communist Party I recommend you follow them, by the way.
The headline is, Hong Kong Police Force vows to quickly clarify rumors and misinformation with new public relations wing.
Oh, well, that sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Assistant Commissioner Chan Tung, who will oversee the public relations wing, told the press last Friday that misinformation and fake news were largely behind the deteriorating relationship between the police and the public.
Really?
So a police commissioner will now determine what is misinformation and fake news.
And you see, that's the real reason why Hong Kongers fear and hate their police now.
Not that they're enforcing Communist Party rules in a once-free city.
No, no, no, no.
It's political misinformation.
That's the ticket.
It reminds me of the Ottawa police, who atrociously decided they weren't in the law enforcement business.
They were in the propaganda and threats business, in the political business, in the demonizing Trudeau's enemies business when the convoy came to town.
If the protesters at this point retreat and go home, are they going to be getting sort of repercussions down the road?
Are you going to be sort of actively pursuing the people that you've been sort of documenting and filming who are still out there protesting?
What are your plans after this, after the protest is over?
Thank you.
It's a great question.
And the simple answer is yes.
If you are involved in this protest, we will actively look to identify you and follow up with financial sanctions and criminal charges.
Absolutely.
This investigation will go on for months to come.
It has many, many different streams, both from a federal financial level, from a provincial licensing level, from a criminal code level, from a municipal breach of court order, breach of court injunction level.
It will be a complicated and time-consuming investigation that will go on for a period of time.
You have my commitment that that investigation will continue and we will hold people accountable for taking our streets over.
Yeah, that's not police work.
That's political work.
It's not the misinformation that makes us hate you.
It's the accurate information like this.
Or what?
Hey!
What are you doing?
Hey!
Hey!
That's assault!
I've got it all on video!
Yeah, he failed to ID.
Get back!
Hey!
Hey!
Get back!
Get back!
We're back!
We're filming!
We're doing our part!
Get back!
It's all on video!
No, don't say anything!
Don't say anything!
Hey, Ritz!
Ritz, stand down!
Stand down!
Stand down!
Don't fucking attack me, you fucking go!
Don't engage!
Fucking not giving shit!
Touch me, fuck ass!
This is going right to the media.
YouTube.
What's your name and badge number?
Yeah, you're assaulting.
Look, they're hurting an old man!
A Canadian citizen!
Communism!
This is communism!
He's scared!
Communists!
Call your police chief.
He'll back you up.
Call the police.
Call your police chief.
Yeah, what a disgrace.
But evidently, the Ottawa police and Trudeau's approach to critics is a bit of a role model for communist China and how they're ruling over Hong Kong.
We read some more.
The Hong Kong Police Force has rebranded its public relations branch and introduced a 24-hour mechanism to monitor online smearing of police work.
The public relations wing, formerly known as the Police Public Relations Branch, held an opening ceremony at the police headquarters in Wan Chai on Monday.
Local media reported.
Assistant Commissioner Chan Tung, who will oversee the public relations wing, told the press last Friday that misinformation and fake news were largely behind the deteriorating relationship between the police and the public.
Do you believe that?
Fake news.
Is that why Hong Kongers don't like their police?
So here's what they're going to do.
They're going to spy on you and censor you like Trudeau does.
Like his proposed censorship bills going through Parliament do.
I'll read more.
Consequently, one of the wing's major responsibilities is to detect rumors early and proactively provide clarification as soon as possible.
Since the beginning of the year, the police have worked with a tech company to introduce a 24-hour mechanism that monitors heated online debate and words that smear the force.
That's exactly what they do in Canada.
The government here works with tech companies to monitor online debates.
China's Censorship Tactics Revealed00:15:28
Happens here.
Let me show you this.
This is YouTube's so-called community guidelines.
I showed you the paragraph about COVID-19.
As you can see, it censors, quote, content that contradicts World Health Organization or local health authorities' guidance.
So your local health politician, your local health bureaucrat, gets YouTube to suspend or delete your YouTube video if it contradicts the government.
So China is doing that in Hong Kong now, not just on COVID, of course, but anything that criticizes the government.
I'll read more.
Chief Superintendent of Police Karen Seng said incidents that occurred in 2019 when the city saw months-long protest and unrest showed that misinformation could cause profound and long-lasting devastation.
Devastation, eh?
That's how the entire Canadian establishment talks about the peaceful trucker protests and all its honking.
Devastation.
Just a reminder of some of those beautiful moments in Hong Kong's peaceful uprising.
It wasn't even an uprising, it was a protest.
They didn't rise up.
They just raised their voices.
China is a evil party.
Hong Kong, no more to stand with China.
We need independence.
Yep.
And what's your message to...
Have you seen Donald Trump?
Do you think he should step in?
Donald Trump don't trust China.
China is S-Ho!
He wants the British government to come back and rule us again.
Don't want the Chinese government to rule us anymore.
You want the British to come back?
Yes, of course.
The Chinese government is terrible.
What's your message to people who call the old British government a colonial power that used to abuse the entire world?
No, simply we just want the British government to come back and rule us again.
It's that simple?
Okay.
So do you think the British did well?
The British government did very well.
Why have we got an American flag here today?
Because we appreciate the American spirit.
We fight for freedom and democracy till death.
Okay.
And so if you could send a message to Donald Trump, what would it be?
Mr. Trump, we are very humble, powerless people in Hong Kong.
And we know that when the Americans fight for their independence, they need to pay a lot, like for bread and life.
And we are prepared for that.
And in any moment, if you can help us, like the American people and President Trump, please help us.
I would like to have this chance to thank President Trump that speaks things in Hong Kong for us.
Especially a few days ago, he speak with a lot of powerful people in different countries about Hong Kong situation.
And we appreciate that.
And thank you for him to help us speak out the situation in Hong Kong.
No, there was no misinformation or disinformation, but that's what the government says.
What exactly is disinformation?
Well, these days it's anything that contradicts the politicians in power, right?
I mean, that sounds crazy, right?
That's what China's doing.
Well, that's actually the exact same standard that Canada's government, the Trudeau's government, uses to condemn disinformation here.
You remember, Trudeau's Department of Defense paid the University of Calgary to demonize critics of the Liberal government as being in league with Vladimir Putin.
Seriously.
They said that anyone who doesn't support Trudeau or tries to remove support for Trudeau is by definition part of foreign disinformation.
That's nuts.
But if the Canadian government can say that, why can't the Chinese government say that?
And of course, the most important thing to say is you're violating press freedom is that you support press freedom.
Orwell taught us that.
Respect press freedom.
The new head of the police's public relations wing said he disagreed that police actions taken against defunct news outlets, Apple Daily and Stan News, had led to a decline in Hong Kong's press freedom.
They literally shut down the newspapers.
They seized their bank accounts.
But that's because those newspapers were getting in the way of freedom, you see.
It made us more free to have those newspapers gone, you see.
Quote, the police force is very respectful of both press freedom and the freedom of individuals.
Anyone can express their views online, but there is one important point.
They cannot break the law, Chan said.
Right, same in Canada, right?
The only problem is that the law in both countries now covers peaceful political dissent.
In both Canada and Hong Kong, it does now.
This is a terrible, terrible story.
One of the saddest things in the world is to see Hong Kong, a beacon of freedom for a century, be absolutely crushed by Communist China, even though the hand, the fingers on the hand that's doing the crushing, were the Hong Kong police.
But they weren't acting as Hong Kong police.
They weren't acting for Hong Kong at all.
They were acting as an arm of the Communist Party in Beijing.
It's so sad.
I wonder how much longer until Trudeau's police copy China's police and raid Rebel News' office.
It's not just Canada.
In the United States, Joe Biden nominated someone to be their disinformation commissioner.
Seriously, remember her?
Maundering is really quite ferocious.
It's when a huckster takes some lies and makes them sound precocious.
By singing them in Congress or a mainstream outcome.
Disinformation's origins are slightly less atrocious.
Yeah, that's a little kooky.
The New York Post called her scary poppins.
And I think that her quirkiness and the fact that she just wouldn't stop singing songs, that's actually, I think, the reason she was driven out of the job, pure public ridicule.
But Canada is setting up a similar disinformation bureau.
Same idea.
Actually, identical in many ways.
Surely designed in cooperation with Biden's Democrats.
The coincidences are too uncanny.
And there is no derision or opposition to the idea in Canada.
Certainly not from the 99% of the media Trudeau is renting through his media bailout.
And the United Kingdom is introducing the same idea, too.
They call it the online safety bill.
Sure.
Your safety is what they really are caring about.
We saw a sniff of what could be more to come: a bunch of cops showing up at someone's house in the UK and arresting them for liking a Facebook post.
Remember when we showed you this the other day when we talked to Lawrence Fox?
No.
The Shepherdshire Police would realize how ridiculous this is.
It is ridiculous.
I'm telling you to come to this.
What did it need to come to?
Don't tell us why you're escalating it to this level.
Because I don't understand.
I posted something that he posted.
You come to arrest me, you don't arrest him.
Why has it come to this?
Why am I in cuffs?
Because of something he shared then I shared.
Because someone has been caused, obviously, anxiety based upon your social media taste.
That's not why you've been around.
So yeah, terrible censors, strangling democracy, ending a century of freedom, ruining a once-great place to live.
The end of an era.
What a shame.
It might not ever come back to freedom, I regret.
Sorry, that last sentence.
I could be talking about Hong Kong, but I could be talking about the UK or Canada too, couldn't I?
Stay with us for more.
Hey, remember this shocking front page story in the Toronto Star a few months ago?
People wishing for the deaths of the unvaccinated, complete heartlessness.
Now, allegedly, these were tweets that the Toronto Star found online, but an investigative journalist showed that's just not the case.
Some of them were very, very obscure tweets.
Some were written ironically, and others were simply confected by the star.
But no matter what their explanation was, the purpose, or the effect rather, was clear.
That is exactly how the Toronto Star felt.
They hated the unvaccinated and wanted to whip up rage.
The number one newspaper in Canada, measured by readership, the number one recipient of Justin Trudeau's bailout money, measured in absolute dollars, whipped up a hatred against the unvaccinated.
Well, here's the Toronto Star just absolutely against anger.
There's an anger in the land, people, and the Toronto Star wants to get to the bottom of it.
Just like, OJ, he's going to find who the real killers are.
Well, the media will never blame itself joining us now via Skype from Winnipeg to talk about this.
It's our friend Spencer Fernando from spencerfernando.com.
Great to see you again.
The layers of irony, the layers of, I don't know, projection here are too many to count.
What do you make of the Toronto Star calling for an end to anger after they whipped up so much of it, Spencer?
Yeah, well, I mean, it's obviously very hypocritical.
You know, if they at some point admitted, you know, if they said something like, look, you know, we've participated in a lot of this anger.
You know, we put out a front page that was, you know, trying to whip up anger and, you know, really seems like hatred in many ways towards people.
They may not describe it that way, but that's, I think, how many people took it.
You know, if they said, okay, we admit our role and in part of being part of the country getting angry, then I think people would be more sympathetic to them.
It'd say, okay, you know, people are angry all over the place.
You played a role in it.
You're admitting it.
And now you're trying to tone things down.
But for them to just act as if they're just completely innocent victims, like, oh, well, what happened?
I mean, we had nothing to do with this.
We're so shocked that people are angry, but nothing to do with us.
For them to do that, I think, you know, a lot of people are just not going to be sympathetic to what they're saying now because they don't have the credibility to say that they're not part of it.
I mean, they were part of it.
They pushed an attitude towards millions of Canadians.
That was an attitude of hatred or dislike, very strong dislike.
And when you put out a front page saying things like, oh, just let them die, you can't really get more dehumanizing towards people or more harsh towards people.
So how do you think people are going to take that?
People are just going to say, oh, well, that doesn't bother me at all.
That's totally fine.
And they were doing that at the same time, of course, that Justin Trudeau was trying to run an election campaign on a very similar theme.
He originally, before the election, said, oh, we're not a country that mandates vaccination.
He seemed to understand how divisive and dangerous it would be.
But once he started to get a little concerned about his poll numbers and an election came around, then all of a sudden he totally flipped.
And so the media should have been holding him accountable for that, but instead they largely went along with it.
And that's a big reason that so many people have lost a lot of trust in the establishment press.
Yeah.
You know, I think there's another reason why people are skeptical of the Toronto Star suddenly calling for harmony and love.
And it's because when they talk about hatred, they don't say, well, the hatred is in every human heart, perhaps even our own, and let's all try and bring back love in this country and unity rather than division.
And yes, we were part of the party.
They see not only are they failing to recognize their own role, but if you ask the star, if you ask the CBC, if you ask Global News where that hatred and anger comes from, they will give a partisan answer.
They will say from right-wingers.
They will never say from partisans on both ends of the divide.
They will never say both sides.
They will always use it against their political enemies.
And I noticed a campaign, the Canadian Association of Journalists.
I see Rachel Gilmore of Global News, the Toronto Star, literally asking the police to get involved in tackling people who criticize them.
Now, I, Spencer, I'm sure you're the same way.
If there is someone who's actually making a violent threat, absolutely the police should get involved.
That's in the criminal code.
That's not new.
If the threat comes in person over the telephone or over email, it doesn't matter.
A threat's a threat.
But I think what these folks are doing so often is conflating conservatives clapping back at the media, conservatives shouting back at the media that they felt shouted at them, conflating anger with threats and violence.
That's what scares me.
When the Toronto Star and the Canadian Association of Journalists say, hey, police, get involved.
I don't believe they mean just for the death threats.
I think they mean anyone who's mad at us, have the cops knock on their door like they do in the UK.
Yeah, that's what's concerning.
I think anyone who's making threats against a journalist against their life or hinting that they're going to hurt them, that's obviously unacceptable.
And everybody should denounce that.
Whether it's a journalist you like or dislike, that's obviously unacceptable.
And the police should investigate that.
I mean, that's already against the law.
It should be investigated.
And people should not be fearing for their jobs.
You put out bad reporting.
You shouldn't fear for your life, not job.
Your life, though.
And so that's not acceptable.
But the problem is you can see what they're doing is they're going to start saying, oh, well, okay, it's not just threats that are the problem.
It's the criticism.
And people who they so distrust in the media and so distrust in the government.
And that's what's leading to all these threats.
And then they're going to say, well, to protect journalists, we need to obviously crack down on people who are too critical of the media or too critical of the government.
And then they're going to push for legislation.
And of course, the Liberals will be glad to oblige them, right?
I mean, the Liberals have been pushing in that direction already with online hate legislation.
They're obviously expanding the definition of hate, keeping it very vague as well, which makes it easy for the government to interpret it in a very political and partisan way.
So I think that's the concern.
They're taking a very legitimate issue, which is threats against the life of journalists, which is unacceptable and everyone condemns.
And then they're trying to take that and expand that and say, well, that's just a part of the problem.
But that really, those people are just motivated by people who criticize the media.
And so that's where I think they're going to go too far and they're going to push for, ironically, an environment that's far less free and really makes freedom of the press non-existent.
You know, I couldn't help but notice that the Canadian Association of Journalists who weighed in on this matter, I think it was the exact same day where Salman Rushdie, the author who wrote the satanic verses that got himself a fatwa calling for his death, and he was nearly killed in New York City.
So this shocking event that should send real chills through anyone in the creative industry.
Media Manipulation Fight00:08:11
The Canadian Association of Journalists didn't have a word to say about it for days.
I stopped checking three days into it.
So they were worried about mean tweets, but they actually had nothing to say about Salman Rushdie being stabbed and almost murdered.
It's like I say about the Toronto Star, it makes it a little bit hard to take them seriously when they're silent about the most egregious act of real censorship in our time.
Let me throw one more thing at you.
There's a senator from Alberta, appointed by Trudeau.
And she wrote a whole series of tweets about how tough it is to be a journalist, and especially a female journalist.
I'm sure that's true.
I'm sure there's meanness and it's gendered threats.
I get it.
But the one example she posted, I read, I'll put it on the screen right here.
There are lots of mean words and lots of insults and it's very rude and I acknowledge all that and I don't think people should send emails like this.
But there's not a single in not a single threat in it.
It's just someone who's really, really mad clapping back at the government.
In this case, a Trudeau appointed senator who will be there for 22 years and this lowly guy can't do anything about it.
Can't vote her out.
Can't hold her to account in any way.
So all he has is the ability to holler at her in an email.
And yeah, I don't like it either.
But if you're such a political person as this senator and there's no way to hold you accountable and you're outraged that someone would use mean language, I think we've lost the plot.
I think if you're in the public sphere, you should be prepared to take heckling and yeah, even swearing, even though we don't like it.
Yeah, there's a little bit of, you know, people wanting to have all the benefits of something, but none of the drawbacks or downsides, right?
So you see a good politicians are a good example.
Oh, yeah, you want a lot of power.
So you get to legislate and control a large segment of the population.
You can destroy thousands of jobs on a whim.
But how dare anyone criticize you or say anything bad about you or send you a mean email, right?
And so it's they want all the power, but they don't want the accountability or the downside.
Look, you're a politician.
You're kind of a minor celebrity in the country.
We know celebrities have a lot of crazy people who say things to them.
And so that's just part of the job.
Now, I do want to clarify, obviously, I'm not talking about a death threat.
Death threats should not be part of any job and are unacceptable, but you can see that they're trying to conflate two very different things.
Angry people who are saying they're just venting their anger.
And then there's people who are making specific threats, which is unacceptable.
So we need to always make sure that there's a clear line between those two things.
I agree with you 100%.
And it's so frustrating for me because some of our reporters have actually been physically assaulted.
Our reporter Alexis, shot in the leg.
Our reporter David Menzies, beat up.
And there was silence from the Canadian Association of Journalists.
Silence from Paula Simons, this liberal senator.
Nothing to say about that because we're the wrong kind of reporter.
But you say a mean word about Paula Simons or Global News and they want to call the police.
Anyway, I don't know.
I think that the media is just as, I mean, people say rebel news is advocacy and we have too many strong opinions.
I don't think we hide our point of view.
I think for the Toronto Star and these others to pretend that they're neutral, we see through that.
That's the reason people are angry at the media.
That front page in the Toronto Star, that was not neutral.
People can be mad at the media and the media think that they are like water.
They're invisible.
They're just so pure.
They are just as partisan as any politician and they just don't like the political accountability.
Last word to you, Spencer.
Do you think things are going to get worse in terms of censorship?
I think the Liberals definitely want it to go that way.
I think a lot is going to depend on the next federal election.
You know, Pierre Polyeva has been very strong on talking about how he's going to get rid of the censorship legislation and not let legislation like that pass.
So if the conservatives can win and they keep their promises, you can never really fully trust anybody in politics.
But if they get in and keep their promises, then things could improve.
But if the Liberals, you know, stay in power, and obviously the NDP is trying to help them stay in power, then they're going to keep pushing in this direction, and the media just gets more and more like an arm of the government.
And you have the media and the government both pushing for censorship at the same time.
So a lot's going to depend on the election, and a lot's going to depend on independent media like ourselves.
Isn't that the truth?
Well, it's so great to spend some time with you.
Thanks very much.
Folks, if you're not subscribed to Spencer's email, you're doing it wrong.
Go to spencerfernando.com.
I love his emails.
I follow him on Twitter, obviously.
And give us one more word.
You're starting a new long-form letter, right?
Just tell us a little bit about that, because I saw that pop up the other day.
Yeah, I had a lot of people say they were looking for a way to support my writing, not just one-time donations, but on a monthly basis, and looking for more long-form writing as well.
So I'm doing that.
Once every week, I do a long-form political newsletter.
Quite a lot of detail in it.
So if you like to read a lot about politics and you like my perspectives, then it's $40 a month.
And you can sign up through Patreon.
And I'll send out more information on that for people as well.
But I'm not going to stop doing my website as well.
I'm going to be doing both.
So a lot of work, but it's worth it.
And we have a big fight ahead.
So I hope people will support it.
That's great.
And they can get all those details at spencerfernando.com.
That's right.
Okay.
Well, congratulations.
Good luck with that.
That sounds like a big undertaking.
Looking forward to it.
All right.
Take care.
All right, there you have it.
Spencer Fernando, stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
You were...
Your viewer feedback.
Randy 1743 says they call it astroturfing in the United States.
They are paid bodies to hold signs and make noise.
A lot of the people don't even know what they are protesting about if you talk to them.
You're talking about these paid professional protesters, Astroturf.
I've heard that phrase because, of course, there's real grassroots and then there's fake grass, astroturf.
I believe that at least one of the guys in Vancouver is a true believer, that Eichler guy.
But from my own observation, most of the people of these left-wing protests are literally paid to be there, and some of them are paid with a few bucks and lunch.
They are actually homeless people or other people with great disadvantage.
King Tulabby says that's why the trucker protest had to be crushed because it was a genuine protest.
There is such a difference in my experience between how a liberal protest goes and a conservative protest goes.
I should get out more and do more street journalism instead of just being here in the office.
My favorite thing to do at a protest is just to say, why are you here?
Or what does your sign mean?
And if you do that at a liberal protest, they often don't know.
They often didn't make the sign.
They're just carrying it.
And they always say, well, talk to that organizer.
I don't want to get it wrong.
Talk to him about why we're here.
Well, didn't you come here?
You don't know why you're here?
You go to a conservative anti-lockdown or a freedom-oriented anti-lockdown protest.
You ask someone, why are you here?
Well, get ready, you know, to spend half an hour getting the whole McGilla.
Oh, Shannon23 says from Seattle here, one of our city council members, Toddler, says anti-pajamas.
Not kidding.
Good job, Katie.
I am excited that Katie is joining the team, and it was nice to have her here at our world headquarters.
Seattle is an amazing city.
It's so beautiful.
There's so many wonderful things about it.
But it shows what happens when radical Democrats take over even a wonderful city.
They can wreck it.
I mean, it's hard to believe now, but Detroit was once the most enticing city in North America, the city with the highest industrial wage, the city everyone wanted to go to.
It's the city after Motown.
They called Motown because it was the cultural capital for so many things.
And then Democrats destroyed it.
And I think they're doing that to some Canadian cities too.
Seattle is one they're doing it too.
That's our stories for today.
Until tomorrow.
On behalf of all of us here at Rubble World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.
And keep fighting for freedom.
Juan Mendosa reporting for Rebel News.
Key West Drug Bust00:01:34
So Key West Police and members of the Coconut Mallory Marina had a huge surprise this weekend as they encountered a large amount of suspected drugs near their location.
Police authorities in Key West, Florida, located three hours away from Miami and located at the southernmost tip of the United States, found a large amount of suspected cocaine floating off at Key West on Saturday, August 13th.
Key West Police notified that around 3.30 p.m., officers were sent to the Coconut Mallory Marina.
The reasoning is that a person informed investigators that he found the bail about 50 miles offshore of the marina.
The Monroe County Sheriff's Office stated that there were 25 rectangle-shaped bricks wrapped in green plastic with black triple X decals on each.
According to the investigators, the total estimated weight of the narcotics package is around 55 pounds.
These suspected cocaine bricks were later turned over to federal authorities.
Narcotics trafficking has become a big issue happening in the United States.
It's seen with the recent fentanyl crisis, where China supplies the materials to Mexican cartels to develop the narcotic and then smuggle into the United States.
The effects of narcotics trafficking is seen in this country, since the leading cause of death for people ages 18 to 45 is opioid overdose.