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The mother of a woman who lost her life to fentanyl believes that the United States is under chemical attack, as she and other families of victims call for sanctions on China over its role in the crisis.
Andrea Thomas, whose daughter Ashley Romero died in 2018 from an accidental overdose of the synthetic opioid, is asking the U.S. Trade Representative, or USTR, to investigate China's role in the manufacturing of the illicit substance.
The group she helped start, Facing Fentanyl, and its lawyers allege inaction by the Chinese government to stop the manufacture of the drug has cost the U.S. trillions of dollars, as well as thousands of lives each year.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. told Newsweek that the country had the "strongest determination, the most relentless policy and one of the best records in the world" on counternarcotics, including fighting the production of precursor chemicals.
"I know what my family has experienced, I don't have to do this," Thomas told Newsweek. "I can go back to my house, enjoy my grandchildren, the life that we've missed fighting this.
"There is nothing we can do to bring her back. Nothing. This is so horrific that we cannot risk another family experiencing this and that's why we do it."
Thousands of American Families Affected
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, synthetic opioids like fentanyl account for 70 percent of overdose deaths in the U.S., and that number is rising. In 2022, the number of these overdoses—approximately 74,000—was nearly 25 times higher than in 2010. Among the most bedeviling problems with fentanyl is that a fatal dose is tiny and can be secreted inside other pills. It is not something a person can see, taste or smell. Not everyone affected is struggling with substance abuse, with children among those who have died after accidentally ingesting the drug.
For Romero, 32, who took half a pill given to her by her partner, neither she nor him knew that fentanyl was present. It looked like a medication she had taken before.
"The repercussion was not just to my family alone," Thomas said. "The person giving her this pill, that loved her very much, took his own life the following day. Put a gun in his hand and took his own life."
Thomas said two families were forever devastated from just half a pill, with a 7-year-old daughter left behind, and that this was happening to families all across the U.S.
"It does not matter if she was experimenting and trying a drug for the first time, and it doesn't matter if she was seeking the drug," Thomas said. "None of that matters. What matters is that this is a preventable death."
The 'Ultimate Geographic Source'
Facing Fentanyl estimates that around 400,000 Americans have died as a result of illicit fentanyl in recent years, and believes that China's failure in addressing exports of the chemicals used in the manufacturing of the substance has fueled the surge in overdoses.
In April, the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party found China was the "ultimate geographic source" of the fentanyl crisis.
Companies there manufacture key ingredients which are used to make the lethal substance. The committee alleged that the Chinese government was actively subsidizing them, despite its government's ban on the production of the drug itself in 2019.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced some sanctions in October 2023, but then said in late October that those working in the trade had simply adapted to changing rules.
A spokesperson for C4ADS, a nonprofit that works to tackle illicit crime networks around the world, echoed this, telling Newsweek that synthetic drug networks react quickly to changing rules and technologies.
"These networks diversify their products and adjust chemical formulas to stay ahead of enforcement, producing a wide range of precursors that often fly under the radar," the spokesperson said.
"For instance, just months after China's 2019 decision to ban the uncontrolled production of fentanyl, we found a surge of Chinese chemical companies advertising brand-new forms of fentanyl precursors, which could be used to synthesize fentanyl. At the time, these new chemicals were not on any controlled substance lists in both the U.S. and China."
The Brookings Institute wrote in March 2023 that the past three U.S. administrations, including President Joe Biden's, had focused on diplomatic relations to put pressure on China to tighten its rules on fentanyl production. However, the strained relationship between the two countries made any changes unlikely, the report submitted to Congress read.
"While China takes counternarcotics diplomacy in Southeast Asia and the Pacific very seriously, its operational law enforcement cooperation tends to be highly selective, self-serving, limited, and subordinate to its geopolitical interests," the report said. "Beijing rarely acts against the top echelons of Chinese criminal syndicates unless they specifically contradict a narrow set of interests of the Chinese Government."
Nazak Nikakhtar, an attorney representing the group, told Newsweek that diplomacy had failed and tougher action was now needed. "We just see these disingenuous promises by China over and over again," said Nikakhtar, who worked in U.S.-Chinese trade for 20 years. She added China had previously agreed to control the finished fentanyl substance but had not cracked down on websites selling its components overseas or prosecuted the exporters themselves.
Calls For Sanctions
Facing Fentanyl has filed a petition to the USTR over China's role in the crisis, and the office has 45 days to decide if it will investigate. USTR told Newsweek in a statement that it had received the petition and it was under review. Should an investigation proceed, it could mean more sanctions on China, including tariffs on goods which could generate up to $50 billion annually.
"China stands ready to conduct counternarcotics cooperation with the US on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit," the Chinese Embassy spokesperson said via email. "Let me stress that the root cause of the overdose lies in the U.S. itself, which calls for more effective measures from the U.S. government."
The Drug Enforcement Administration said it had seized more than 80 million fentanyl-laced fake pills in 2023, along with nearly 12,000 pounds of fentanyl powder, which worked out at around 390 million fatal doses—enough to kill the entire U.S. population. Just 2 milligrams is enough to kill the average person.
About 150 people a day die of a fentanyl overdose in the U.S., according to the CDC.
Thomas said it would mean everything to see action taken by the U.S. government, not just to families like hers but also those unaware of an overdose that's about to affect them.
"We're being overtaken by another country that is [waging] their silent chemical war on our country and taking the lives of an entire generation," Thomas said. "This is the right thing to do and it should have been done actually a long time ago."
