Teen Dies From Opioid Far More Potent Than Fentanyl

San Francisco officials didn't learn a new, ultra-potent opioid had arrived in the city from lab tests or drug busts. They learned it from the autopsy of a 16-year-old. In the New York Times, Jenna Russell reports on the April death of Dante Lacourte, whose mother assumed fentanyl was to blame—until the coroner's report named something she'd never heard of: cychlorphine. It's a synthetic opioid estimated to be about 10 times stronger than fentanyl, invisible to standard test strips, and often requiring multiple doses of Narcan to counteract, if it can be reversed at all.

Russell traces cychlorphine's path from a Belgian lab in the 1960s to San Francisco's streets today, where it's quietly appearing in counterfeit pills sold to teens and people with high fentanyl tolerance. The piece follows Dante's yearslong struggle with anxiety, depression, and addiction; his parents' attempts to get him treatment; and the police investigation that led to arrests of alleged pill suppliers. It also details how cities are scrambling to spot and track new synthetic drugs—sometimes only after a body is on the table. It's not just a Bay Area problem: Overdoses linked to cychlorphine stretch from Tennessee all the way to the Yukon, per the CBC. For more, read Russell's full story in the Times.