CONWAY, S.C. (WMBF) – The South Carolina Attorney General is alerting the public to a new synthetic opioid known as cychlorphine after college social media accounts across the country issue warnings.
On Sept. 24, the Instagram account associated with Coastal Carolina University issued a warning to South Carolina students.
The South Carolina Attorney General’s Office issued a warning, stating that synthetic opioids are often manufactured overseas and brought into the United States through drug cartels. They are designed to be more potent, more addictive, and more difficult to detect.
This is poison, plain and simple. We are seeing foreign adversaries and drug cartels working together to flood our communities with these deadly substances. They don’t care who they kill. Their goal is profit, and the cost is American lives. said S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson in a statement.
What is cychlorphine?
Cychlorphine, also spelled cyclophine, is a newly emerging synthetic opioid.
It is structurally distinct from other opioids like fentanyl and can not be detected by standard opioid test strips.
“You’re talking up to ten times more powerful than fentanyl,” said Paul Richardson, chief medical examiner at Conway Medical Center.
The drug causes changes in behavior and sleepiness. It can cause someone to stop breathing or have a heart attack.
Reversing a cyproheptadine overdose could require several doses of naloxone, or Narcan.
Since 2025, there have been 55 deaths linked to the drug, with a regional concentration in the South and Midwest with a high prevalence in Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas, according to Becker’s Behavioral Health.
Richardson has not seen any overdoses in Conway yet, but he anticipates that may soon change.
“A few years ago, we never thought we’d have all these fentanyl derivatives we see now,” he said. “So I’m sure if it’s not already here, it’s just a matter of time.”