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- Cychlorphine is a lab-made opioid that laboratory tests found to be more potent than fentanyl.
- Health officials warn that the drug has been found in illicit drugs, including powders and counterfeit pills made to look like prescription medications.
- Cychlorphine’s strength can increase the risks of overdosing.
After years of fentanyl causing fatal overdoses, public officials are now warning of an even more powerful opioid.
After years of fentanyl causing fatal overdoses, public officials are now warning of an even more powerful opioid.
Cychlorphine (sy-KLOR-feen) is a synthetic, or lab-made, opioid — specifically, a class of drugs known as orphines. Created by researchers who were trying to find powerful painkillers in the 1960s, orphines were ultimately considered too strong and dangerous, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration never approved cychlorphine for medical use.
Cychlorphine is a Schedule I drug that cannot be possessed or sold under federal law, but it has been increasingly linked to overdoses after China banned synthetic opioids called nitazenes.
People who track illicit drugs in the United States first identified cychlorphine in the drug supply in 2024, and Reddit users were talking about it online that same year. The drug is now making headlines in connection with U.S. overdose deaths.
It was linked to a 16-year-old’s death in San Francisco in April. And in Knoxville, Tennessee, officials said cychlorphine had been detected in about 50 suspected overdose deaths from July 2025 to early June.
Officials in Louisiana and Los Angeles County have issued public alerts warning residents of its risks as well.
How prevalent is cychlorphine in the U.S.?
In 2024, there was one report of cychlorphine in the U.S. drug supply, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. In 2025, there were 16 reports of it in 10 states.
Nationally, orphines don’t currently appear to be widespread, but “prevalence and trends are hard to discern,” said Jason R. Williams, a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute.
Hospitals and medical examiners’ toxicology tests and even crime labs sometimes fail to detect any given drug until it becomes a substance that officials are interested in tracking or collecting data on, he said.
The National Drug Control Policy office said it is currently most prevalent in Ohio, Texas and Tennessee.
Following a fatal overdose in Los Angeles County, public health officials there warnedthat cychlorphine is being mixed into the illicit drug supply without people’s knowledge. It has been found in powders, rocks or crystals, liquids and counterfeit pills made to look like prescription medications, they said.
How strong is cychlorphine?
The Drug Enforcement Administration describes fentanyl — a synthetic opioid that is approved for medical use — as about 100 times more potent than morphine.
Laboratory tests show cychlorphine is about 10 times more potent than fentanyl, said Alex Krotulski, director of toxicology and chemistry at the Center for Forensic Science Research and Education.
“That’s the only data that we have right now,” Krotulski said in July. Fentanyl has been studied in humans, but cychlorphine has not been studied in humans or animals, he said. “So we’re really finding out in real time what its effects on humans are.”
The drug’s potential effect on a person, however, depends on the dose, not just the cychlorphine’s potency.
