The mother of a woman who lost her life to fentanyl has told Newsweek 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 (USTR) to investigate China’s role in the manufacturing of illicit fentanyl.
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.
“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.”
Ashley Romero was 32 when she took a pill laced with fentanyl, which killed her, leaving behind her 7-year-old son. Her mother, Andrea Thomas, is one of those fighting for an investigation into China’s role in the production of the lethal drug.
Family handout/AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File
Thousands of American families affected by fentanyl
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that synthetic opioids like fentanyl account for 70 percent of overdose deaths in the U.S. and that number is rising. In 2022, these overdoses — approximately 74,000 —were 25 times higher than they were 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 Ashley, 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.”
China is ‘ultimate geographic source’ of the crisis
Frank A. Tarentino III, center, Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York Division, joins other members of the DEA on National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day, Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024, in New York’s Times Square, in front of a specially wrapped truck provided by the American Trucking Associations’ Trucking Cares Foundation in partnership with Facing Fentanyl. At the event the DEA and Facing Fentanyl educated and informed the public about the dangers of illicit fentanyl use and distributed Kloxxado, a double-strength version (8mg) of naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal nasal spray.
Diane Bondareff/AP Content Services for Facing Fentanyl
Facing Fentanyl estimates 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 Oct. 2023, but then said this week that those working in the trade had simply adapted to changing rules.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, speaks during a news conference at the Department of Justice, announcing the disruptions of the fentanyl precursor chemical supply chain, Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023, in Washington. The US announced a series of indictments and sanctions against 14 people and 14 firms across China and Canada related to the import of fentanyl into the United States.
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
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,” Nikakhtar, who worked in U.S.-Chinese trade for 20 years, explained.
The attorney said China had previously agreed to control the finished fentanyl substance but had not cracked down on the websites selling its components overseas or prosecuted the exporters themselves.
China reacts to calls for sanctions
The group is calling for the USTR to investigate China’s role in the fentanyl crisis, and the office has 45 days to decide if it will. USTR told Newsweek in an emailed statement that it had received the petition, and it was under review.
Should an investigation proceed, it could mean more sanctions being placed on China, including tariffs on goods which could generate up to $50 billion annually.
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 counter-narcotics, including fighting the production of precursor chemicals.
“China stands ready to conduct counternarcotics cooperation with the US on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit,” the 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.”
Tablets believed to be laced with fentanyl are displayed at the Drug Enforcement Administration Northeast Regional Laboratory on October 8, 2019 in New York.
DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) 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 to at around 390 million fatal doses — enough to kill the entire U.S. population. Just 2 milligrams of the substance is enough to kill the average person.
“We’re being overtaken by another country that is yielding right 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.”
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.
About 150 people a day are still dying of fentanyl overdoses in the U.S., or one every 10 minutes.