New synthetic opioid cychlorphine appearing on Ohio streets, researcher warns

[00:00:01]You've likely heard of fentanyl, but now there's a new drug on Ohio streets that researchers say is even more powerful, more deadly, and most people have never heard of it. It was first discovered in the United States last fall, and this drug can kill even when naloxone is used to try and reverse it. 19 investigator Mike Mason explains why.

[00:00:21]>> First, there was fentanyl, then nitazenes. Now, there's a new synthetic opioid called cyclorphine. It belongs to a newly emerging class of compounds called orphines. Experts say they first appeared in the US last fall.

[00:00:36]>> It's pretty It's pretty serious. It's pretty scary, very scary.

[00:00:40]>> Dr. John Sprague is a toxicologist and scientific researcher at Bowling Green State University. He also does drug research for the Attorney General's Office. Sprague says cyclorphine has already begun showing up on Ohio's streets.

[00:00:54]>> We trying to get the information out there as quickly as we could to health care professionals to know that you may be dealing with something you've never seen before.

[00:01:03]>> Last fall, a Hamilton County man overdosed on what he thought was Xanax.

[00:01:08]>> Product that he bought contained not only cyclorphine, it contained fentanyl, it contained xylazine.

[00:01:13]>> The man survived, but paramedics had to administer several doses of naloxone.

[00:01:18]Sprague says in some cases, naloxone may not be enough to reverse an overdose.

[00:01:23]Ohio's Bureau of Criminal Investigation says orphines have been found in Ohio 36 times since last October.

[00:01:30]Two cases were in Elyria, and one was in Summit County. Dr. Sprague says orphines are becoming popular because they release more dopamines than other opiates, but he says the drug can also be deadlier.

[00:01:42]>> Look at it. It's a like the old fair games where they you go and you take the hammer and you hit the plate and the thing goes up to hit the bell at the top. Fentanyl will go 90% of the way, whereas cyclorphine appears they go all the way with one smack of that plate.

[00:01:58]>> And it gives the user a higher high.

[00:02:01]>> Correct.

[00:02:02]>> Scientists invented cyclorphine in a lab decades ago, but it was too dangerous to go on the market. Sprague says Ohio is the only state where orphines are listed as a controlled substance. That's because we have something called the pharmacophore rule. That means any drug sharing fentanyl's chemical structure is automatically illegal in Ohio.

[00:02:23]>> And so, fentanyl has the potato background. Cyclorphine has the same potato background. They just added more substances to it, so they put a mustache on the potato head. And so, immediately cyclorphine was a schedule one drug in Ohio because it had the same core backbone as fentanyl did.

[00:02:44]>> Dr. Sprague says naloxone should always be given after an overdose. It might work after several doses. He says Chinese chemists began manufacturing orphines after nitazenes were banned last year. Mike Mason, 19 News.