Fears Grow as New Drug 10 Times Stronger Than Fentanyl Spreads in US

When Christina Lacourte discovered her 16-year-old son, Dante, unresponsive inside their San Francisco apartment in April, she immediately reached for two doses of Narcan in the kitchen and administered both.

Neither dose revived him.

Dante had been overcome by cychlorphine, a synthetic opioid reportedly up to 10 times more powerful than fentanyl—strong enough to defeat the emergency medication many parents rely on during an overdose.

Adding to the danger, fentanyl test strips do not detect cychlorphine.

For Christina, the most frightening part was the speed at which this highly potent and difficult-to-detect drug appears to be spreading across the United States.

The case in San Francisco, which drew national attention this week, is not the only reported death linked to the emerging opioid.

In December, 18-year-old Jake Scoufos died in Oklahoma after taking a counterfeit pill he believed was safe. The pill had been contaminated with cychlorphine.

His mother, Malisa Hepner, was left with the same devastating conclusion.

‘In a lot of cases, you can survive a fentanyl overdose. You can’t survive this,’ Malisa told the Daily Mail.

Federal drug officials have connected cychlorphine to at least 55 deaths across the country, with the largest clusters reported in Ohio, Texas and Tennessee.

The drug has been associated with fatalities in at least 18 states.

In Tennessee, the Knox County Regional Forensic Center alone has linked cychlorphine to at least 41 overdose deaths during the past year.

Experts caution, however, that the reported total may be a significant undercount. Routine toxicology panels and commonly used fentanyl test strips can both miss the substance.

Malisa found Jake unresponsive in his bedroom in Yukon, Oklahoma. He was sitting upright, appearing almost peaceful—as if he had fallen asleep while looking at his phone.

To her, he looked as though he were simply sleeping.

Jake thought he was purchasing prescription Percocet from a supplier he had known for years, someone he trusted and believed would provide safe pills.

Malisa said his death illustrates how even teenagers who consider themselves cautious and experienced can be exposed to a lethal counterfeit pill.

Like many determined teenagers, she said, Jake believed he could avoid the dangers that claimed others.

‘Certainly, the ego of an 18-year-old is unrivaled, and he believed he was so smart, and it would never happen to him because he just knew better,’ said Malisa.

She said her family has been ‘okay, but not fine’ in the months since Jake’s death, leaning on grief counseling while trying to understand a drug that wasn’t even identified as the true cause of his death until March this year.

Malisa, 46, isn’t interested in turning her son’s death into a political crusade against cartels or dealers.

Instead, she wants other parents and their children to understand the danger before it’s too late.

She said she wishes she had understood her son’s struggles earlier.

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‘I wish I had understood that all of his little impulsive, erratic choices really was him searching for a way to find peace in the chaos of his internal world,’ she said.

‘My own fear and my own shame prevented me from getting him help far before we found him in his bedroom.’

Cychlorphine was first developed decades ago in a European lab as scientists searched for powerful painkillers, but it proved far too potent and dangerous for medical approval.

Decades later, the recipe for producing it has resurfaced in the darkest corners of the internet, giving underground chemists the tools to manufacture it themselves.

As with other opioids, much of the supply is believed to come from cartel-run labs in Mexico, using chemicals sourced from China.

The dealers encountered by Jake, Dante and other users often have no idea what’s inside the pills they’re selling.

Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University professor and former White House drug policy adviser, said such drugs no longer require sophisticated pharmaceutical operations to produce.

‘You don’t need to be a big pharma company,’ he explained, noting that cychlorphine can be cooked up cheaply without the farmland needed to grow other narcotics.

Like fentanyl, its principal danger lies in respiratory depression, as the drug can slow or entirely stop a person’s breathing within minutes.

Because of its potency, an overdose is far harder to reverse using naloxone, the emergency antidote better known by its brand name, Narcan.

‘It is ten times more potent than fentanyl… it’s considered Narcan resistant,’ Malisa said.

Jake’s own overdose was initially blamed on fentanyl, and it wasn’t until March 2026 that cychlorphine was confirmed as the true cause of his death.

After Dante died in his mother’s apartment in San Francisco’s Lower Nob Hill neighborhood, police launched an investigation.

They later raided three residences and arrested four men on narcotics and firearms charges linked to the case.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie vowed the city would not repeat the mistakes of the earlier fentanyl crisis that devastated its streets for years.

‘San Francisco was caught flat-footed by the fentanyl crisis. We will not let that happen again,’ he said.

Nationwide, opioid overdose deaths climbed to historic highs during the pandemic before beginning a steep decline from 2023 onward, offering some hope that the worst may finally be passing.

But that trend brings Malisa little comfort. She doubts America will ever fully shake the epidemic, believing new synthetic drugs will keep emerging for as long as supplying them remains a way of life for those involved.

Now working as a therapist and podcast host, she urges other parents to stay alert to their children’s struggles before a crisis takes hold, and to treat any unfamiliar pill as a potential death sentence.

Mostly, though, she chooses to remember her son’s positive energy and charming grin.

‘It was just the kind of smile that really made everybody else smile,’ she said.