On Christmas Eve, Malisa Hepner hung a stocking for her 18-year-old son, Jake Scoufos, as she had done every year for each of her three children, leaving his carefully wrapped gifts beneath the tree. The Oklahoma mother had been looking forward to the holidays, but 11 days earlier, she had discovered Jake dead in his bed from a drug overdose.
“He still had a stocking, he still had gifts … because we do the same amount of gifts per kid,” Hepner told The Independent. “And so there was the exact same amount under the tree for him.”
Hepner found her son still half-propped up on his bed, as though he had fallen asleep while scrolling on his phone, with three pink pills beside him. “It looked really peaceful,” the grieving mother said, taking a small measure of solace in the idea that Jake did not suffer.
A Mother's Discovery
At first, she feared that Jake had died of a fentanyl overdose, even though she said her son was “afraid” of the drug and was not aware he had ever taken it. But three months later, when her son’s toxicology report came back, Hepner was told that a powerful synthetic opioid known as cychlorphine had been detected in his bloodstream and had contributed to his death. She had never heard of it.
“My first thought was, is this just another name for fentanyl?” Hepner, from the Oklahoma City suburb of Yukon, recalled. “So I Googled it, and the very first thing that popped up was the stories from Tennessee, because at that time they had 16 deaths…”
Jake Scoufos is one of at least 55 Americans whose deaths have been linked to the new synthetic opioid, as more states have issued urgent public warnings about the deadly drug in recent months. Cychlorphine is incredibly difficult to detect and does not show up in drug test strips or in routine hospital opioid urine screens. For that reason, experts fear the number of linked deaths is likely even higher.
The Danger of Cychlorphine
Initial lab testing shows the synthetic could be up to 10 times more potent than fentanyl—and those taking and dealing it likely have no idea it is lurking in the pills, experts said. It can be found mixed in with fentanyl, methamphetamine, bromazolam, cocaine, and other substances, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. So far, it has been traced in at least 13 states: California, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington.
“We believe that this young man did not realize he was buying cychlorphine, and probably the person he bought it from did not realize they were selling cychlorphine,” Mark Woodward of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics told The Independent. “Because it's so new, they probably thought they were either selling fentanyl or selling oxycodone. And so it's another cat-and-mouse game.”
Cychlorphine first appeared in the U.S. in 2024, officials believe. Local, state, and federal authorities believe that the drug originates in China and is entering the U.S. via the Canadian border or through Europe.
“I know without a shadow of a doubt he had no idea, and I don't believe the person who sold it to him had any idea,” Hepner added. “Nobody's suspecting that this could be in what they're buying…I said to my family, I want to go public with this.”
A Mother's Campaign
Hepner’s first social media post about the cychlorphine found in her son’s bloodstream prompted the Oklahoma bureau to issue a state-wide warning about the drug in March, which in turn triggered nationwide warnings.
The 45-year-old therapist described her son as “bright, magnetic, and the life of the party.” He was “one of those people that you saw the sun shining through him,” she remembered fondly. And while Jake could be disruptive in school and struggled due to his ADHD and autism, his mother said, outside of the classroom the teenager was a skilled mechanic with a promising career ahead of him. It was his passion, and for Christmas he asked his mother for car parts from the auto shop where he had worked since graduation.
“He was really happy and felt a path forward, and was feeling optimistic,” she said of her son’s mindset shortly before he died. Hepner was aware Jake had dabbled in drugs before but believed he had “turned a corner.” She said that he struggled to cope with what she called “normal everyday traumas,” including his parents’ divorce when he was younger. “He liked the escape. He did not want to feel anything,” she said.
When he turned 18, Jake moved out of his mother’s home and lived with a roommate for a while, which ultimately did not work out, Hepner said. He moved back home for a few weeks to recalibrate before his untimely death on December 13.
“I didn't know he was abusing drugs, but I still worried about him all the time,” Hepner said. “For a while, I had a fear of knocking on his door. So I don't know if it was intuition. I don't know what it was, but I was always afraid of this outcome, even when he wasn't using to my knowledge.”
The night of his overdose, Jake had returned home from an evening with friends at around 11 p.m., which was unusually early for the teen. He stayed up chatting to his mother and stepfather for a while about wanting new parts for his car, before they went to bed. “I guess at some point right after that, he took another pill, and that was the one that killed him,” Hepner said.
It was not unusual for Jake to surface from his bedroom late on the weekends, but when there was no sign of him by late afternoon, Hepner knew something was seriously wrong. “I knocked on the door, and he didn't answer,” she recalled. “I yelled his name, and he didn't answer.”
Her eldest son entered the room first as Hepner stood in the doorway, bracing herself that her “biggest fear” was about to come true. “You could tell that he had been scrolling on his phone and just fell asleep,” Hepner said. “He was kind of laying on his side, propped up, looking at his phone. That was pretty traumatic to know that he had been in his room dead for all those hours.”
Expert Warnings and Advice
Cychlorphine is so strong that even a microscopic amount, smaller than a grain of salt, can be fatal, authorities warned. Even more worrying is that NARCAN, the life-saving nasal spray medication for opioid emergencies, has proved less effective in reversing cychlorphine overdoses.
Mark Woodward of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics advises parents to have an honest and real conversation with their kids about cychlorphine: “It’s about letting kids know their own classmates could be the next victim at a party. Tell your kids: You don't want to take anything that you don't know what it is, and you don't want to give somebody something when you don't know what it is.”
He also recommends regularly checking what is in your medicine cabinet: “A lot of these kids and adults who are on black market opioids to feed their addiction started out on painkillers that they took out of a medicine cabinet. Oftentimes, it's 13, 14, and 15-year-olds, when the parents aren't around, the kids go to the medicine cabinet. They take the anti-anxiety drugs, they take the painkillers, and they think it's a safe high because it's pharmaceutical. And before they know it, they've got a full-blown opioid addiction.”
Additionally, check to see if your area has drug take-back boxes for unwanted medications. Since 2011, Oklahoma has collected over 100 tons of prescription and over-the-counter medicine that people have turned in to these drug boxes. “We would encourage other states to follow suit. We don't want people stockpiling drugs in the house. They really need to be able to drop it off on their way to school or work,” Woodward said.
Regional Impact and Testing Challenges
Deaths involving the drug so far appear to be concentrated in the South, Midwest, and Northeast regions, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. In East Tennessee, 48 deaths have been linked to the opioid, according to Chris Thomas, chief administrative officer and director of Knox County Regional Forensic Center. He is deeply concerned.
“I can tell you that I have never seen, outside of fentanyl itself…no drug has come in this fast and affected so many deaths in such a short period of time,” Thomas told The Independent.
One of the drivers behind the high concentration of cases in East Tennessee is to do with how toxicology testing is carried out, and the varying capabilities of labs across states. “We really don't have a great picture on how prevalent and spread out this drug really is,” Thomas explained. “Our numbers are really large because we're doing the extra work and the testing and the research on these cases.”
“Every state is different in the way that they confront drug related deaths and their medical examiner system—there's funding issues, personnel issues, support issues,” Thomas added. “A typical county medical examiner may not have the ability to do this.”
With such limited data, identifying trends is difficult. But Thomas said from the first 10 cases involving the drug, some patterns did emerge. Many were in unstable housing situations and had low incomes. Their ages ranged from 20 to 64. “In the last 10 cases I've had, I've started seeing people in their 20s and 30s, which also is not a good sign,” Thomas said. “You don't want to see those younger individuals succumbing to this, because they're supposed to be the educated and the generation that's gonna break this.”
“It has never been more dangerous to take street-level drugs than right now,” Thomas added.
A Mother's Mission
Woodward, of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, praised Hepner for going public about her son, and credited her with spreading the word about the drug. “It was really the mother and her [social media] post that is probably going to save a lot of lives,” he said. “Had she not said anything, it might not have been something that really got much attention.”
While Hepner said she does not intend to launch a “crusade to get drugs off the streets,” she does want to make sure that her son’s story will make young people stop and think before they take a pill. The people she wants to reach most are kids who are “maybe trying for the first time because they feel a little curiosity or confusion, or they’re just trying to get their pain to go away, and then they die the very first time they try it.”
For Hepner, knowing that Jake might save at least one life is a measure of comfort amid the tragedy. “I don't want other people to die of this,” Hepner said. “If I had to lose him in such a tragic way, and I know that someone, at least one person, isn't going to buy pills and get manufactured pills that have this drug, or even fentanyl…it’s very comforting.”
