Nearly twenty years after drug dependancy despatched him to rehab as a teen, 36-year-old Michael Nalewaja had settled right into a quiet life in Alaska the place he labored as an electrician.
That all got here crashing down days earlier than Thanksgiving 2025, when he and a mutual pal unknowingly took a deadly cocktail of fentanyl and carfentanil they could have mistaken for cocaine.
“I heard the word ‘autopsy’ and I literally just collapsed to the floor,” his mom, Kelley Nalewaja mentioned, recalling the decision she acquired from his spouse. “Even if somebody had been there prepared with Narcan — even if somebody had called 911 in time — he was not going to survive.”
Carfentanil, a weapons-grade chemical that authorities say is 10,000 occasions stronger than morphine and 100 occasions stronger than fentanyl, has seen a drastic resurgence throughout the U.S., killing a whole bunch of unsuspecting drug customers.
The rise coincides with a current crackdown by the Chinese authorities on the sale of precursors used to make fentanyl. Those rules are possible prompting traffickers in Mexico to make use of carfentanil to spice up the efficiency of a weakened model of fentanyl, in accordance with U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence bulletins reviewed by The Associated Press.
The surge of a drug so lethal that lower than a poppy seed-sized quantity can kill an individual comes as fentanyl seizures and total drug overdose deaths proceed a multiyear decline.
“You’re talking about not even a grain of salt that could be potentially lethal,” mentioned Frank Tarentino, the DEA’s chief of operations for its northeast area, which stretches from Maine to Virginia. “This presents an extremely frightening proposition for substance abuse dependent people who seek opioids on the street today.”
A decade in the past, carfentanil exploded into the North American drug provide, inflicting a whole bunch of unsuspecting drug customers to overdose, solely to see a significant dip after China banned it, closing a key regulatory loophole within the U.S.
But the state of affairs has shifted dramatically lately.
In 2025, DEA labs recognized carfentanil 1,400 occasions in U.S. drug seizures, in contrast with 145 in 2023 and solely 54 in 2022, in accordance with DEA data considered by AP.
Traffickers in Mexico could also be experimenting with producing carfentanil themselves, authorities say, whereas others might be procuring it from China-based distributors skirting the nation’s rules by spamming on-line boards in different nations with advertisements for the drug.
Complicating issues for the cartels are the intense risks related to manufacturing carfentanil, Tarentino mentioned.
“You can’t just dabble in this,” he mentioned. “This is not some mad scientist on Reddit you’re going to get to go out to a rudimentary laboratory in Mexico to make carfentanil.”
Dip in overdose deaths and fentanyl seizures
U.S. overdose deaths have fallen for greater than two years — the longest drop in a long time. Experts level to a number of potential explanations, together with the overdose-reversing drug naloxone being extra broadly accessible and the enlargement of dependancy therapy. Some have additionally tied it to the regulatory modifications the U.S. has pressed for in China.
Experts say that even a number of excessive doses of naloxone may not be sufficient to reverse an overdose when carfentanil is concerned.
Fentanyl seizures, together with a number of different illicit medicine, have additionally dipped. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that fentanyl seizures plunged to about 12,000 kilos (5,443 kilograms) in 2025 — lower than half the quantity seized in 2023.
But even as fentanyl numbers fall, it stays a significant focus of the DEA. Just just lately, the company’s proposed funds included a $362 million enhance centered on cartel-driven fentanyl trafficking.
“Anyone who takes a pill that is not prescribed to them by their doctor is playing a game of Russian roulette with their life,” mentioned Sara Carter, President Donald Trump’s drug czar. “But if those terrorists think they can continue this chemical warfare without consequences, they are wrong.”
While the prevalence of carfentanil nonetheless pales compared to fentanyl, specialists are nonetheless alarmed by the rise of a substance researched for years as a chemical weapon and deployed by Russian forces on Chechen separatists in 2002.
The DEA’s annual quota for lawfully manufactured carfentanil — veterinarians use it to tranquilize elephants and different giant animals — is simply 20 grams, an quantity that may match within the palm of your hand.
“It’s like a biological weapon,” mentioned Michael King Jr., founding father of the Opioid Awareness Foundation. “If the world thinks we had a problem with fentanyl, that’s minute compared to what we’re going to be dealing with with carfentanil.”
In 2024, overdose deaths involving carfentanil practically tripled in comparison with the earlier 12 months, with 413 deaths throughout 42 states and Washington, D.C., in accordance with the newest knowledge accessible by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Carfentanil definitely has that potential of spreading throughout the United States unless law enforcement really focuses in on carfentanil and they develop intelligence as to how these drug addicts are getting it,” mentioned Mike Vigil, a former chief of worldwide operations on the DEA.
In current months, the DEA has documented a number of giant seizures of carfentanil. In October, the DEA Los Angeles Field Division discovered 628,000 drugs containing carfentanil, whereas in September, officers seized greater than 50,000 counterfeit M30 drugs from an individual at a gas station in Washington state that turned out to be a mix of carfentanil and acetaminophen.
In some instances, frequent drug customers have turn into tolerant to fentanyl and are looking for out carfentanil, regardless of the hazard, due to the sudden euphoria it guarantees, defined Rob Tanguay, senior medical lead for dependancy providers with Recovery Alberta, a well being company in Canada. It appeals to the drug market, he mentioned, as a result of so little of it goes such a good distance towards provide.
“The toughest part about all of this,” he mentioned, “is that this is all about money.”
After Michael Nalewaja’s dying, his mom determined towards a big funeral.
Instead, she organized a city corridor in her hometown of El Dorado Hills, California, bringing collectively native officers together with moms who had gone by one thing comparable.
As she grieves her son, an adept salesman stuffed with charisma who had just lately gotten a nationwide award by {the electrical} union, she’s pushing for main legislative and judicial modifications so others don’t undergo what she did due to a drug she mentioned was by no means meant for people.
“It’s not an OD; it’s not an overdose,” she mentioned. “It’s a murder weapon.”