Dante Paul Lacourte was 16 when his mother found him dead in his bed. His body had turned blue, the Daily Wire reports, and black fluid was coming from his nose and mouth.
She assumed fentanyl. The toxicology results said otherwise. What killed her son, according to the medical examiner’s findings, was cychlorphine — a synthetic opioid estimated to be up to 10 times more potent than fentanyl, and one that standard overdose-prevention tools cannot detect.
Lacourte’s death marked the first time cychlorphine appeared in a San Francisco medical examiner’s report, making his case a warning about a drug that public health officials and federal authorities say may already be spreading through the nation’s illicit supply.
A Drug Born in a 1960s Belgian Lab
Cychlorphine has an unusual origin story. The compound traces back to research conducted during the 1960s in a Belgian laboratory, where scientists were searching for painkillers powerful enough to ease severe pain from conditions such as bone cancer, according to the Daily Wire’s reporting.
Those drugs were never approved for medical use. Researchers at the time considered them too strong and dangerous. But the formulas did not vanish. They were published in scientific journals and remain accessible today.
Keith Humphreys, a psychiatry professor at Stanford University, put the pathway plainly: the research is “now available in the dark corners of the internet,” he told the Daily Wire.
Then came the assessment that has become something of a grim refrain for communities learning about a new synthetic opioid after the fact. “The worst possible way to find out a new drug is in the city,” Humphreys said, “is by an autopsy.”
A Teenager Struggling With Depression and Anxiety
Leo Wingate, Lacourte’s friend, told The New York Times that the teenager used drugs while struggling with depression and anxiety. Wingate was with Lacourte the night he died and said he dropped him off at his apartment late that evening after the two smoked marijuana.
According to Wingate’s account, Lacourte often obtained drugs from San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood and would take pills despite knowing they might contain fentanyl. His mother repeatedly warned him about the danger. “It just takes one pill,” she told him.
That warning has become a familiar one for parents in a city where fentanyl has long been a presence in the street-level drug market. What makes cychlorphine different — and more frightening to investigators — is that the one-pill calculus has changed. Cychlorphine is not merely stronger than fentanyl. It is harder to spot.
Four Arrests, 20,000 Pills
Police investigating Lacourte’s death used evidence pulled from his phone and pills found in his bedroom to conduct undercover drug purchases and obtain arrest warrants, the Daily Wire reported.
Four people were arrested on numerous felony charges: Leander Pitts, 46; Starr Lamare, 39; Sharonnee Hyson, 44; and Nicholas Wallace, 46. The Tenderloin location where Wallace was taken into custody was about a 10-minute walk from where Lacourte died.
Authorities seized roughly 20,000 pills during the investigation. Police have also recovered pills that tested positive for cychlorphine in unrelated arrests — a sign, investigators say, that the drug is circulating through San Francisco’s illicit drug market rather than appearing in a single batch tied to one case.
Federal Warnings and Cases in 10 States
Shortly after Lacourte’s death, the Trump administration warned that cychlorphine could spread across the country, according to the Daily Wire. Federal officials said the drug had already been detected in at least 10 states: California, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. At least 55 deaths have been linked to cychlorphine since 2025.
The geographic spread is one challenge. The pharmacology is another. Cychlorphine is difficult to combat precisely because it can go undetected, the Daily Wire reported. The drug does not show up on standard fentanyl test strips or on routine opioid urine screens — the two tools most commonly used by people who use drugs and by clinicians trying to identify exposures.
That detection gap means a person who tests a pill and sees a negative result may still be holding a lethal dose. It also means that hospitals and medical examiners may miss cychlorphine cases unless they specifically look for the compound, potentially leaving the true toll of the drug undercounted in official data.
‘It Just Takes One Pill’
The story of Lacourte’s death, first reported in detail by The New York Times and confirmed in the Daily Wire’s account, has become the most visible illustration to date of how cychlorphine moves from a decades-old research file to a teenager’s bedroom. A mother’s warning that one pill could kill her son, delivered repeatedly, turned out to be literally true — just not in the way she or anyone else initially assumed.
Investigators say the pills tied to Lacourte’s case came from a neighborhood and a supply chain that continue to operate, and that additional cychlorphine-positive pills have surfaced in unrelated arrests since his death. Drug policy experts like Humphreys say the pattern is familiar: a new synthetic emerges in the supply, the public learns about it after fatalities, and the response follows.
For now, the drug’s distinguishing feature is a combination that leaves users, clinicians, and families with little room to react: extreme potency, no medical approval, no reliable field test, and no routine screen for a compound that has already been tied to deaths in at least 10 states.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/teen-overdose-serves-as-warning-for-drug-10x-stronger-than-fentanyl