Nearly two decades after drug addiction sent him to rehab as a teenager, 36-year-old Michael Nalewaja lived a quiet life in Alaska where he worked as an electrician.
That all went down just days before Thanksgiving 2025, when he and a mutual friend unwittingly ingested a lethal cocktail of fentanyl and carfentanil they may have mistaken for cocaine.
“I heard the word ‘autopsy’ and I was literally floored,” his mother Kelly Nalewaja said, recalling the phone call from his wife. “Even if someone had been prepared with Narcan — even if someone had called 911 in time — he would not have lived.”
Carfentanil, a weapons-grade chemical that authorities say is 10,000 times more potent than morphine and 100 times more potent than fentanyl, has seen a drastic resurgence across the US, killing hundreds of unsuspecting drug users.
The increase coincides with the Chinese government’s recent crackdown on the sale of precursors used to make fentanyl. According to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence bulletins reviewed by The Associated Press, those regulations are prompting Mexican traffickers to use carfentanil to boost the potency of a weaker version of fentanyl.
Growing a drug so deadly that a dose less than the size of a poppy seed can kill a person, fentanyl attacks and overall drug overdose deaths continue a multiyear decline.
“You’re talking about a grain of salt that could potentially be lethal,” said Frank Tarantino, the DEA’s chief of operations for its Northeast region, which stretches from Maine to Virginia. “This presents an extremely frightening proposition for substance-dependent individuals seeking opioids on the streets today.”
Carfentanil increase
A decade ago, carfentanil exploded into the North American drug supply, leading to hundreds of unsuspecting drug users to overdose, only to see a major decline after China banned it, closing major regulatory loopholes in the US.
But the situation has changed dramatically in recent years.
In 2025, DEA labs identified carfentanil in US drug seizures 1,400 times, compared with 145 in 2023 and just 54 in 2022, according to DEA records seen by the AP.
Mexican traffickers may be using it to produce carfentanil themselves, officials say, while others may buy it from China-based sellers by spamming online forums in other countries with advertisements for the drug, flouting the country’s regulations.
Complicating matters for the cartels are the extreme dangers associated with manufacturing carfentanil, Tarantino said.
“You can’t just dive into it,” he said. “It’s not some mad scientist on Reddit that you’re going to go to a primary lab in Mexico to make carfentanil.”
Drowning in overdose deaths and fentanyl seizures
US overdose deaths have fallen for more than two years — the longest decline in decades. Experts point to several possible explanations, including the overdose-reversing drug naloxone being more widely available and the expansion of addiction treatment. Some have also linked it to US-led regulatory changes in China.
Experts say even very high doses of naloxone may not be enough to reverse an overdose when carfentanil is involved.
Along with many other illegal drugs, fentanyl seizures have also decreased. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that fentanyl seizures dipped to about 12,000 pounds (5,443 kilograms) in 2025 — less than half of the amount seized in 2023.
But even as fentanyl numbers drop, it remains the DEA’s main focus. Most recently, the agency’s proposed budget included a $362 million increase focused on cartel-driven fentanyl trafficking.
President Donald Trump’s drug czar, Sarah Carter, said, “Anyone who takes a pill that their doctor didn’t prescribe to them is playing a game of Russian roulette with their life.” “But if those terrorists think they can continue this chemical warfare without consequence, they are wrong.”
Investigated as a chemical weapon
While the prevalence of carfentanil still pales in comparison to that of fentanyl, experts are concerned about the rise of the substance, which has been researched for years as a chemical weapon and was deployed by the Russian military against Chechen separatists in 2002.
The DEA’s annual quota for legally manufactured carfentanil — used by veterinarians to tranquilize elephants and other large animals — is just 20 grams, an amount that could fit in the palm of your hand.
“It’s like a biological weapon,” said Michael King Jr., founder of the Opioid Awareness Foundation. “If the world thinks we have a problem with fentanyl, that’s minute compared to what we’re dealing with with carfentanil.”
In 2024, carfentanil overdose deaths will nearly triple from the previous year, with 413 deaths in 42 states and Washington, D.C., according to the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Carfentanil certainly has the potential to spread in the United States unless law enforcement really focuses on carfentanil and they develop intelligence on how these drug addicts are getting it,” said Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations at the DEA.
In recent months, the DEA has documented several large seizures of carfentanil. In October, the DEA Los Angeles Field Division found 628,000 pills containing carfentanil, while in September, authorities seized more than 50,000 counterfeit M30 pills from a man at a gas station in Washington state that contained a mixture of carfentanil and acetaminophen.
‘All About Money’
In some cases, repeat drug users have become tolerant to fentanyl and are seeking carfentanil because of the sudden euphoria, despite the danger, said Rob Tanguay, senior medical lead for addiction services with Canada’s health agency Recovery Alberta. It appeals to the pharmaceutical market, he said, because just a little of it goes a long way toward supply.
“The hardest part about all of this,” he said, “is that it’s all about the money.”
After Michael Nalewaja’s death, his mother decided not to have a grand funeral.
Instead, she organized a town hall in her hometown of El Dorado Hills, California, bringing together local officials and mothers who were going through something similar.
As she mourns her son, a charismatic salesman who recently won a national award from the electrical union, she is pushing for major legislative and judicial changes so that others will never have to suffer the same drug-induced trauma she said she did.
“It’s not an OD; it’s not an overdose,” she said. “It’s a murder weapon.”
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Associated Press writer Joshua Goodman in Miami contributed.
