DENVER — Federal and state health officials are warning the public about a new and dangerous synthetic opioid called cychlorphine, following a social media post that began circulating among students at Colorado State University alerting them to the drug’s presence in the illicit supply.
The Drug Enforcement Administration’s Rocky Mountain Division, which has spent years warning the public about the dangers of fentanyl, confirmed that cychlorphine is making its way into the illicit drug supply and reaching unsuspecting users. DEA Associate Administrator Gary Owen addressed the broader trend of increasingly dangerous synthetic substances entering the drug supply in a statement posted to the agency’s social media. “Illicit fentanyl is being mixed with new, deadly and more synthetic drugs like xylazine, nitazenes, cychlorphine and medetomidine. These names may be unfamiliar, but the impact is devastating,” Owen said.
Former Acting DEA Administrator Derek Maltz addressed the specific danger cychlorphine poses in an interview with Fox News, emphasizing that existing overdose-prevention tools are not equipped to detect it. “Cyclorphine is 10x more potent than fentanyl. The fentanyl test strips that are out there. These single drug test strips are not going to detect it,” Maltz said.
One drug researcher told FOX31 that a central concern surrounding cychlorphine is that it has not been studied in humans, leaving significant uncertainty about how much of the substance could constitute a dangerous or fatal dose given its potency.
Despite that uncertainty, health officials have confirmed that existing overdose-reversal medication remains effective against the drug. A spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment addressed this directly. “As an opioid antagonist, naloxone remains effective in reversing overdoses caused by synthetic opioids like cychlorphine,” the CDPHE spokesperson said. Naloxone, commonly sold under the brand name Narcan, works by rapidly blocking opioid receptors in the brain, reversing the effects of an opioid overdose, including dangerously slowed or stopped breathing, and has become an increasingly widely distributed harm-reduction tool amid the broader synthetic opioid crisis.
The Stout Street Foundation, a Denver-area substance use treatment center, said opioids like cychlorphine can be crushed into powder form and either injected or snorted. Counselors at the center expressed concern about the drug’s growing and largely undetected presence in the illicit supply. Stout Street Foundation Chief Operating Officer Joseph Ellis explained why awareness efforts around the drug remain limited so far. “It’s new enough that there’s no street name for it,” Ellis said. “People aren’t aware how prominent it is in the fake pills that are on the streets.”
The DEA’s Rocky Mountain Division told FOX31 it has not yet identified cychlorphine within its own jurisdiction, which spans Colorado and several neighboring states, noting that the closest confirmed cases identified so far have been reported in Texas and Oklahoma. The agency said it currently classifies cychlorphine as an emerging threat, reflecting its limited but growing documented presence within the broader illicit drug supply.
The CDPHE spokesperson noted that, as of the most recent data, Colorado has not recorded any confirmed overdose deaths specifically involving cychlorphine. The spokesperson explained that this absence of confirmed cases may partly reflect testing limitations rather than the drug’s true prevalence, since cychlorphine, as a novel synthetic opioid, is not included in standard post-mortem toxicology panels and may only be identified if specifically requested by investigating coroners during an autopsy.
One drug expert cited in the report said cychlorphine has been found appearing in drugs where users did not expect to encounter it, a pattern consistent with the broader trend of synthetic opioids being mixed into counterfeit pills and other illicit substances without users’ knowledge. That unpredictability is part of what has prompted students at Colorado State University to begin spreading warnings about the drug across campus on their own, independent of the more formal warnings issued by the DEA and state health officials.
Officials emphasized that the absence of a reliable test strip for cychlorphine represents a significant gap in the tools currently available to drug users seeking to reduce their personal risk, given that standard fentanyl test strips are not designed to detect this newer synthetic compound. That gap, combined with the drug’s reported potency, has driven officials to urge heightened vigilance among anyone who may come into contact with counterfeit pills or other illicit substances circulating within the current drug supply.
For anyone concerned about a possible opioid overdose, whether involving cychlorphine, fentanyl or another substance, officials continue to emphasize that naloxone remains an effective emergency response tool and that anyone witnessing signs of an overdose, including slowed or stopped breathing, unresponsiveness or blue-tinted lips or fingertips, should administer naloxone if available and call 911 immediately.
With cychlorphine now formally classified as an emerging threat by federal officials and confirmed cases so far concentrated in Texas and Oklahoma, health authorities in Colorado and neighboring states are likely to continue monitoring for the drug’s spread, while urging both the public and coroners investigating unexplained deaths to remain alert to a substance that current standard toxicology screening may otherwise fail to detect.
Discussion about this post