Drug 100x Stronger Than Fentanyl Is a 'Murder Weapon'

Nearly two decades after drug addiction sent him to rehab as a teen, 36-year-old Michael Nalewaja had settled into a quiet life in Alaska where he worked as an electrician. That all came crashing down days before Thanksgiving 2025, when he and a mutual friend unknowingly took a lethal cocktail of fentanyl and carfentanil they may have mistaken for cocaine. "Even if somebody had been there prepared with Narcan—even if somebody had called 911 in time—he was not going to survive," his mother, Kelley Nalewaja, tells the AP. Carfentanil, a weapons-grade chemical that authorities say is 10,000 times more potent than morphine and 100 times stronger than fentanyl, has seen a drastic resurgence across the US, killing hundreds of unsuspecting drug users.

The rise coincides with a recent crackdown by the Chinese government on the sale of precursors used to make fentanyl. Those regulations are likely prompting traffickers in Mexico to use carfentanil to boost the potency of a weakened version of fentanyl, per DEA intelligence bulletins. The surge of a drug so deadly that less than a poppy seed-size amount can kill a person comes as fentanyl seizures and overall drug overdose deaths continue a multiyear decline. "You're talking about not even a grain of salt that could be potentially lethal," said Frank Tarentino, the DEA's chief of operations for its northeast region. "This presents an extremely frightening proposition for substance-abuse-dependent people who seek opioids on the street today."

A decade ago, carfentanil exploded into the North American drug supply, causing hundreds of unsuspecting drug users to overdose, only to see a major dip after China banned it, closing a key regulatory loophole in the US. But the situation has shifted dramatically in recent years. In 2025, DEA labs identified carfentanil 1,400 times in US drug seizures, compared with 145 in 2023 and only 54 in 2022, per DEA records. The DEA's annual quota for lawfully manufactured carfentanil—veterinarians use it to tranquilize elephants and other large animals—is just 20g, an amount that can 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 had a problem with fentanyl, that's minute compared to what we're going to be dealing with with carfentanil."

Experts say that even multiple high doses of naloxone might not be enough to reverse an overdose when carfentanil is involved. After Michael Nalewaja's death, his mother decided against a large funeral. Instead, she organized a town hall in her hometown of El Dorado Hills, California, bringing together local officials along with mothers who'd gone through something similar. As she grieves her son, an adept salesman full of charisma who'd recently gotten a national award by the electrical union, she's pushing for major legislative and judicial changes so others don't go through what she did due to a drug she said was never meant for humans. "It's not an OD; it's not an overdose," she said. "It's a murder weapon." More here.