Louisiana is on high alert as experts warn of the spread of a powerful synthetic opioid known as cychlorphine, joining at least 12 states that have issued warnings after finding evidence of the drug, which is linked to at least 41 U.S. deaths.
The drug, sometimes manufactured to resemble commercial painkillers like oxycodone, has been identified in Caddo, DeSoto, and Ouachita parishes, according to recent testing from the North Louisiana Crime Lab.
There are currently no human studies of cychlorphine, but experts warn that lab testing shows the drug could be up to 10 times more powerful than fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that itself is roughly 50 times more potent than heroin. This has experts worried that if cychlorphine penetrates the U.S. drug supply, it will wreak even more havoc than fentanyl, which killed about 48,000 people in 2024, according to the most recent government statistics.
“With a drug like cychlorphine that is more powerful then fentanyl, it could take multiple doses of NARCAN — it could take a truck load of NARCAN — to reverse that overdose,” Kenton Leigh, deputy director of toxicology and chemistry at the lab, told KSLA, referring to a widely available nasal spray used to reverse opioid overdoses.
The lab began warning of danger in March, after a sample from the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office was found to contain the drug.
“These substances are being encountered in counterfeit pharmaceutical forms, significantly increasing the risk of overdose,” it wrote in a public announcement.
Louisiana isn’t alone; states across the country are flagging cases and deaths tied to the drug.
Cychlorphine, also known by its full name of N-Propionitrile Chlorphine, was tied to 41 deaths between July of 2025 and this February, according to health officials in Tennessee. The drug is linked to at least one overdose death in Oklahoma, officials there announced in March. In Ohio, between October and January, eight items seized by police contained cychlorphine or a related compound, with six of these seizures tied to overdose cases.
Overall, the Center for Forensic Science Research & Education, a Justice Department partner, has identified cychlorphine in 25 blood specimens from fatal overdoses, with the drug as the sole opioid in nearly half of those cases. The samples were submitted to the center in late 2025 and early 2026, drawing from eight U.S. states and three provinces in Canada.
Public health officials are especially concerned about the drug because drug test kits and law enforcement testing schemes around the country largely aren’t designed to screen for this emerging threat.
“This is the first time we’ve seen it in South Carolina, which is very scary because none of us knew to test for it,” Naida Rutherford, the coroner in Richland County, South Carolina, told NPR of a recent positive ID of cychlorphine in an overdose death.
A Drug Enforcement Agency lab in Florida first spotted the drug in 2024.
“Through the end of February 2026, DEA laboratories have identified this substance in 22 samples,” the agency told The Hill.
The Independent has contacted the DEA for comment.
Experts believe the drug, likely manufactured in Asia, has grown increasingly prominent as U.S. and Chinese officials alike crack down on other synthetic opioids like fentanyl.
North Louisiana Crime Lab system director Joey Jones told The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate that law enforcement and drug distributors are caught in “a never-ending chase that is a cat-and-mouse game.”
“These are manufactured in China and distributed through the cartels on our streets,” Jones said.
With reported cases of the drug across at least 13 states — New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, California, Illinois, Louisiana, Texas, Washington, Nevada, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Ohio and South Carolina — officials say it is more important than ever to use drugs from legitimate, tested sources.
“It has never been more dangerous to take street-level drugs than right now,” Chris Thomas, chief administrative officer and director of Tennessee’s Knox County Regional Forensic Center, told WATE earlier this month.
