Nearly two decades after a drug addiction landed him in rehab as a teenager, 36-year-old Michael Nalwaja has settled into a quiet life in Alaska where he works as an electrician.
It all came crashing down days before Thanksgiving 2025, when he and a mutual friend inadvertently consumed a deadly cocktail of fentanyl and carfentanil that they may have mistaken for cocaine.
“I heard the word ‘autopsy’ and I fell to the ground,” said his mother, Kelly Nalwaja, recalling the call she received from his wife. “Even if someone had been there prepared with Narcan — even if someone had called 911 in time — they would not have survived.”
Carfentanil, a weapons-grade chemical that authorities say is 10,000 times more powerful than morphine and 100 times more powerful than fentanyl, has seen a sharp resurgence across the United States, killing hundreds of unsuspecting drug users.
This rise coincides with the Chinese government’s recent crackdown on the sale of precursors used to make fentanyl. These regulations are likely to prompt traffickers in Mexico to use carfentanil to enhance the potency of a diluted version of fentanyl, according to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence bulletins reviewed by The Associated Press.
The boom in a drug so deadly that an amount less than the size of a poppy seed can kill a person comes as fentanyl seizures and overall drug overdose deaths have continued to decline for several years.
“You’re not even talking about a grain of salt that could be lethal,” said Frank Tarantino, head of DEA operations for the Northeast region, which stretches from Maine to Virginia. “This represents a very scary proposition for drug-dependent people seeking opioids on the street today.”
A decade ago, carfentanil exploded in the North American drug supply, causing hundreds of unsuspecting drug users to overdose, but has since seen a dramatic decline. China banned it Closing a major regulatory loophole in the United States
But the situation has changed dramatically in recent years.
In 2025, DEA laboratories identified carfentanil 1,400 times in U.S. drug seizures, compared with 145 in 2023 and just 54 in 2022, according to DEA records seen by The Associated Press.
Authorities say traffickers in Mexico may be experimenting with producing carfentanil themselves, while others may be buying it from China-based sellers who circumvent the country’s regulations by spamming online forums in other countries with advertisements for the drug.
What complicates matters for the cartels are the extreme risks associated with manufacturing carfentanil, Tarantino said.
“You can’t just work on that,” he said. “This isn’t a mad scientist on Reddit, where you’re going to go to a primitive lab in Mexico to make carfentanil.”
Overdose deaths in the United States have decreased For more than two years – the longest decline in decades. Experts point to several possible explanations, including: Naloxone reversal drug overdose Being more widely available and expanding addiction treatment. Some have also linked this to regulatory changes that the United States has pushed for in China.
Experts say that even multiple high doses of naloxone may not be enough to reverse an overdose when it comes to carfentanil.
Seizures of fentanyl have also decreased, along with many other illicit drugs. US Customs and Border Protection reported this Fentanyl seizures decreased to about 12,000 pounds (5,443 kilograms) in 2025, less than half the amount confiscated in 2023.
But even as fentanyl numbers decline, it remains a major focus for the DEA. Most recently, the agency’s proposed budget included a $362 million increase centered on fentanyl trafficking due to cartels.
“Anyone who takes a pill that their doctor has not prescribed is playing Russian roulette with their lives,” said Sarah Carter, President Donald Trump’s drug coordinator. “But if these terrorists think they can continue this chemical warfare without consequences, they are mistaken.”
While the prevalence of carfentanil is still small compared to fentanyl, experts are concerned that its prevalence is increasing. Material researched for years As a chemical weapon, Russian forces used it 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 little compared to what we’re going to have to deal with with carfentanil.”
In 2024, overdose deaths involving carfentanil nearly tripled from the previous year, with 413 deaths in 42 states and Washington, D.C., according to the most recent data available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Carfentanil certainly has the potential to spread throughout the United States unless law enforcement really focuses on carfentanil and develops intelligence on how drug addicts obtain 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, DEA Los Angeles Field Division 628,000 pills were found to contain carfentanil, while in September officials confiscated more than 50,000 counterfeit M30 pills from a person in a store. Gas station in Washington The case turned out to be a mixture of carfentanil and acetaminophen.
In some cases, frequent drug users have become tolerant to fentanyl and seek out carfentanil, despite the danger, because of the sudden high it promises, explained Rob Tanguay, chief medical officer of addiction services at Recovery Alberta, a health agency in Canada. It appeals to the pharmaceutical market, he said, because a little goes a long way toward supply.
“The hardest part about all of this is that it’s all about money,” he said.
After Michael Nalwaja died, his mother decided not to have a big funeral.
Instead, she organized a town hall in her hometown of El Dorado Hills, California, bringing together local officials with mothers who had gone through something similar.
As she grieves for her son, a skilled, charismatic salesman who recently received a national award from the electric union, she is pushing for major legislative and judicial changes so others don’t have to go through what she did because of a drug she said was never intended for humans.
“It’s not 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.