A pair of Texas friends died less than three months apart after ingesting pills laced with a dangerous new synthetic opioid, and now their mothers are begging US officials to sound the alarm on the little-known drug up to 43 times more lethal than fentanyl.

The young men both died this year after swallowing different pills secretly tainted with the deadly, often Narcan-resistant opioids known as nitazenes, which have begun seeping into the US at an alarming rate.

Lucci Reyes-McCallister, 22, died January 26 near Houston, Texas, after taking a pill labeled as Xanax that was actually laced with N-Pyrrolidino Protonitazene, an emerging form of nitazene. 4

The particular strain of the new synthetic narcotic that killed Lucci is 25 times more lethal than fentanyl, but other nitazenes a

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