The Lab Came Down in July 2024 and the Charges Landed Twenty-Six Months Later, and Health Canada Put the Machine at Forty-Five Million Tablets: the RCMP Charge Six Over Two Nitazene Pill Plants in Drummondville and Sherbrooke (September 16, 2026)

SHERBROOKE — The pills looked like oxycodone. That was the point of them. The RCMP said on Wednesday, September 16, 2026 that two separate Federal Policing investigations in the Eastern Region had produced charges against six people over counterfeit pharmaceutical tablets containing nitazenes, and that the two clandestine laboratories behind them were taken apart twenty-six and sixteen months ago respectively. The larger of the two, in a Drummondville residence, came down in July 2024. The charges announced this week are dated September 16, 2026.

Three men are charged in that file and a fourth is wanted. Two more are charged out of a separate basement operation in Sherbrooke dismantled in May 2025. The force publishes no file number for either investigation, no street value for anything seized, and no quote from any officer.

Three of the Six Are Thirty-Eight

The three men charged out of the Drummondville laboratory are all 38 years old. They live in three different places — Coaticook, and two in Sherbrooke — and none of them lives in Drummondville, where the laboratory was. The one man the force says it is still looking for, Jasmin Tremblay, is the only one of the four who does.

The release does not explain the relationship among them, does not say which of them the force alleges operated the equipment, and does not describe how the four were identified. It also splits them across two courthouses: Saint-Pierre and Rancourt to Sherbrooke, Gagné to Drummondville. The RCMP does not say why, and does not say whether the charges against Gagné arise from the same information as the other two.

A Capacity Figure Doing the Work a Seizure Figure Usually Does

What was actually taken out of the Drummondville residence in July 2024 was more than a million tablets containing synthetic opioids, 24 kilograms of ketamine, 6 kilograms of tadalafil, and what the force calls significant quantities of chemicals and laboratory equipment used to manufacture illicit tablets.

The number the release leads with, though, is not a seizure number at all. Health Canada, the RCMP says, assessed the laboratory’s estimated production capacity at more than 45 million tablets. That is a projection of what the plant could have produced, not a count of what it did produce or what was found. The distinction matters because the two figures differ by a factor of forty-five, and the release does not say over what period the capacity was calculated, what inputs the estimate assumed, or whether any of that capacity had already been realised before July 2024.

Tadalafil is worth noting on its own. It is the active ingredient in an erectile-dysfunction medication and is not an opioid. Six kilograms of it sitting alongside a million opioid tablets suggests a facility pressing more than one counterfeit product line, but the release does not say so, does not say what the tadalafil was being pressed into, and does not carry a separate count for it.

The Second Lab, and the Substance the Force Names

The Sherbrooke file began in November 2024 — four months after the Drummondville laboratory was dismantled. In May 2025, officers from the Estrie Detachment took apart a counterfeit-tablet laboratory in the basement of a Sherbrooke residence and seized nearly 60,000 counterfeit protonitazepyne tablets, along with chemicals and what the force describes as sophisticated equipment for large-scale production.

Protonitazepyne is the only substance the RCMP names precisely anywhere in the release, and it names it with a comparator: roughly 25 times stronger than fentanyl. Nitazenes are not fentanyl analogues; they are a separate family of synthetic opioids, originally developed as analgesics and never brought to market. The counterfeit tablets from both files, the force says, mimicked the appearance of legitimate pharmaceutical tablets such as oxycodone closely enough that they could hardly be distinguished from the real product.

For the Drummondville seizure, by contrast, the release says only “tablets containing synthetic opioids.” It does not identify which nitazene, or whether it was a nitazene at all.

What Is Not Reported

No file or occurrence number for either investigation. No street value for the tablets, the ketamine or the tadalafil. No address beyond “a Drummondville residence” and “a Sherbrooke residence.” No arrest dates for any of the six, and no statement of whether any of them were arrested in 2024 or 2025 and released pending charges, or arrested this week. No custody status for Saint-Pierre, Rancourt or Gagné. No full charge list for anyone — the release uses “including” for the Drummondville three and a two-item summary for the Sherbrooke two. No explanation of the twenty-six-month interval between the July 2024 dismantling and the September 2026 charges. No quoted officer. No description of Tremblay and no statement of where he is believed to be.

No gang, street gang, criminal organization or outlaw motorcycle club has been named by the RCMP in either file. None is named or implied here, and no profile page on this site is linked, because none has been alleged by police.

The RCMP asks anyone with information on the illegal activities of individuals or groups of individuals to call 514-939-8300 or 1-800-771-5401, or their local police service.

These allegations have not been tested in court.