Read the original article on the Raleigh News & Observer website.
Trump’s executive order classifies illicit fentanyl as ‘weapon of mass destruction’
Category: National News
Fact Sheet: President Trump designates fentanyl as weapon of mass destruction
Chinese Pill-Press Supplier Sentenced to 52 Months
This is a major moment in the fight against counterfeit pills. โSophieโ Xaiofei Chen has been sentenced to 4 years and 4 months for trafficking pill-making equipment into the U.S., one of the few times a supplier with no direct drug trafficking charges has faced serious consequences.
Learn how this case signals a broader federal crackdown on companies supplying the tools used to manufacture deadly fake pills, why this matters, whatโs next in 2026, and how this prosecution fits into Americaโs struggle with fentanyl-laced counterfeit medications.
Documents and further reading: SafeMedicines.org
Understanding Chinese Money Laundering
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a Bureau of the United States Department of the Treasury, has published a document outlining out Chinese Money Laundering works.
The fake pill trade hasn’t gone away
The Partnership for Safe Medicines has updated their handout which explains what a pill press is and how fake pills are made.
This easy to understand handout can be used to educate people about the risks of counterfeit pills.
Partnership for Safe Medicines update on Pill Presses
The Partnership for Safe Medicines has updated their document which describes pill presses and how they enable counterfeit pills.
Google to block promotion of pill presses on ads and shopping platforms
Read the article on the Partnership for Safe Medicines website.
On July 1, Googleย announcedย that it was updating itsย dangerous products and services policyย to restrict the promotion of pill presses, encapsulating machines and components they use, such as dies, molds and stamps used to create or imprint pills. The change willย affect the Google Ads and Google Shopping platformsย starting in September 2025, with six weeks until full implementation.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that states and tribes proposing importation programs can use โa static baseline approach for the cost-savings analysisโ instead of trying to account for changes in unpredictable markets.
Google (finally) updates their Dangerous Products or Services policy
Read the updated policy on the Google website.
New Report: U.S. drug overdose deaths rise again after hopeful decline
Read the original article on the NPR website.
For the first time in more than a year, street drug deaths appear to be rising across the U.S. according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The latest available data, compiled in January of this year, shows fatal overdoses over the previous 12-month period increased by roughly 1,400 deaths.
“This slight increase reflects historic data and suggests that the U.S. saw more overdose deaths in January 2025 than it did in January 2024,” the CDC said in a statement sent to NPR. “We are working on analyses to better understand geographic trends.”
The CDC data suggests roughly 82,138 deaths during the 12-month period ending in January 2025. That would be a significant increase from the December 2024 report, but it’s still far below the overdose crisis peak of 114,664 recorded in August 2023.
Still, after seventeen months of declines in fatal overdoses that stunned drug policy experts and an unprecedented 27 percent drop in drug deaths in 2024, some addiction researchers described this report as troubling.
Keith Humphreys, a researcher at Stanford University, said the new CDC data could be an early warning that drug death declines brought on by a number of factors, including the end of COVID pandemic disruptions and weaker fentanyl being sold on U.S. streets, could be fading.
“If we assume it’s not a blip, this makes it more likely that the sudden drop [in fatal overdoses] was a one-off event rather than a fundamental change in epidemic dynamics,” Humphreys said in an email.
Most overdose deaths in the U.S. are caused by fentanyl, but researchers who sample the street drug supply have warned of an increasingly dangerous mix of chemicals being sold by dealers, including cocaine and methamphetamines, as well veterinary tranquilizers such as medetomidine and xylazine.
“Overdose trends are not a one-way street, and there will be periodic local increases,” said Nabarun Dasgupta, who studies overdose trends at the University of North Carolina.
His analysis of the latest CDC data suggested “most of the country is still trending down in the right direction.”
According to Dasgupta, the “increase in predicted national numbers are driven primarily by upticks in Texas, Arizona, California and Washington.”
Continue reading “New Report: U.S. drug overdose deaths rise again after hopeful decline”Alleged attempted fentanyl drugging shuts down Southern Colorado music festival
Read the original article on the KRDO website.
LAS ANIMAS COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) – The Apogaea festival was set to be held June 4-8, but it was cut short due to alleged non-consensual drugging involving fentanyl. On Sunday, the Apogaea Board of Directors released a statement to clarify the weekend’s events.
The festival is known as a Colorado Burning Man regional event held near Trinidad, just north of New Mexico. What was expected to be a weekend full of art and music was quickly shut down.
On Thursday afternoon, event organizers say two festival goers came to a department tent, saying they had been gifted a substance that they tested positive for fentanyl. They say a volunteer notified the Apogaea Incident Command System (ICS), which in turn alerted the County emergency coordinator. Apogaea says they never had custody of the substance and did not test it.
The next morning, on Friday, organizers say a participant noticed an undissolved gelcap in their clear water bottle. This tested positive for fentanyl via two strip tests. Organizers say that since the bottle had been on volunteer premises, there was immediate concern that somebody might be targeting the volunteers. Apogaea says they tested the gelcap again with multiple reagent tests, which resulted in confirming the presence of multiple substances.
Field test methodologies are not 100% accurate, and they can result in false positives, shared the Apogaea board. With the presence of the gelcap reagent tests and the multiple positive fentanyl results, Apogaea says their teams had a high confidence that this was a situation of non-consensual drugging.
Organizers say that as a precaution, community water in the nearby Center Camp Cafรฉ and Ranger Station was dumped.ย The board says they updated the County and worked with the Las Animas County Sheriff’s Office (LACSO) to come to the decision to close the event.
The Sheriff’s Office tells KRDO13 it was aware of the incident, however, it was not contacted by anyone to initiate a formal investigation of the alleged incident, nor have any suspects been identified.
KRDO13 spoke with Joe Richards, the Las Animas County Emergency Manager, who was in contact with the event organizers. Richards says the incident commander contacted him initially on Thursday to make him aware that two people at the festival had tested for and found fentanyl in a substance someone had given to them.
He says that after they had another instance with someone finding a capsule in their water the next day, which tested positive for fentanyl, that’s when they became more concerned and contacted him.
Richards tells KRDO13 the incident commander said they’d like to shut the event down to prevent any further risks, and he said it’s up to you, but I support it wholeheartedly.
So he says, as a group, they came to the conclusion to shut down the event, and although some are upset, he’s grateful there were no serious injuries. Richards says the incident commanders were proactive and took the right steps to handle the incident.
Richards says with 1,400-1,500 people at the event, the possibility of someone non-consensually drugging others was highly concerning, especially with how deadly fentanyl is. He says there were multiple EMTs at the festival, along with a local fire department on scene for nearly the entire event.
Apogaea says that to their knowledge, no one was dosed or harmed physically at the event, and there were zero medical transports from the site during the event.