Gray McCallister described his son Lucci with love: a talented tattoo artist, a loving brother and a great friend with a smile that could light up a room.
Lucci’s life was interrupted in January when the 22 -year -old bought and took what he thought was Xanax. The pill was actually entirely made up of a synthetic opioid called Nitazène which can be 40 times as fatal than fentanyl. Lucci overdosed and died.
Since then, McCallister has heard other parents of his native Houston, Texas, who claims that the death of their children was also linked to Nitazens, a class of drugs that health officials fear could lead the next phase of the overdose epidemic.
“In the past two weeks, I would say that even last week, with the interest in the story of Lucci, other parents contacted me because they lost their children,” she told Daily Mail.
Houston was particularly affected by the arrival of Nitazene, which began to infiltrate the supply of American drugs in 2019. From May 2024 to 2025 only, the Texas DEA agents reported 15 deaths by overdose of Nitazène in people aged 17 to 59, the counting of the highest death since the first medication entry in 2022.
Lucci’s friend, Hunter Clement, 21, was one of them. He took two pills sold to him in April, one an Xanax counterfeit and the other a counterfeit percocet. He also overdose and died.
Most standard post-mortem drug screens do not test Nitazens, and local Houston authorities did not have the type of complete panel that would detect Nitaznes
Thus, the two mothers took the pills they found near their sons’ body in a specialized laboratory for tests. When the results returned under the name of Nitazenes, women said they had never heard of the medication.
Lucci Reyes-McCallister, represented with his mother Gray, unconsciously took a pill made up of a synthetic opioid rarely found in the supply of medicines before 2019. He died at 22 years old
“I will never forget when the detective called,” said McCallister, who has pharmaceutical training. “I made him repeat the name twice. I made it spell two or three times. I was looking for an active ingredient in there, something I recognized the name, and I did not do it.
What they learned is that the pill that killed Lucci was pure Nitazène. There was no fentanyl and zero trace of Xanax.
With hindsight, McCallister suspects that it was not Lucci’s first meeting with Nitazene.
Last year, Lucci took a pill and underwent an unmatched overdose which required five doses of narcan, the antidote for opioid overdoses, to bring it back to life.
McCallister thinks that Nitazène had been in a hurry in this pill.
“He rebounded because he was terrified, and he was better,” said McCallister.
“I think that the thing with people of this age is that you want to have a social life, you spend time with people, and it generally involves alcohol, and I think that is when inhibitions slip.”
McCallister is currently working with the police to find out where his son had bought the counterfeit pills.
Lucci is represented at his graduate of high school. He aspired to be a tattoo artist and had worked in prestigious learning at his death
Lucci and his mother were very close. McCallister spoke to him “a billion times a day,” she told Daily Mail, exchanging texts, calls, memes and videos
As a rule, Lucci’s family checked him with him “a billion times a day,” said his mother.
The family exchanged calls, sms, memes and funny videos. But the day he overdosed, they started to worry when they had not heard of him for hours.
He was found dead in his apartment on January 26 with two nearby pills in a hurry to look like Xanax.
“He had a fulfilling life. He had a family who loved him. He was fine, “said his mother.
When Clement, crying for the death of her son a few months later, learned the death of Lucci, she immediately connected the two.
She reached out to McCallister and, from there, had two pills near Hunter’s body was tested more exhaustively for toxins than a standard screen could not detect.
Clement found Hunter one evening in April after a long day of work. Hunter had come home the day before, apparently drunk, arousing concern with his parents. Maybe he had taken half a pilule, she thought at the time.
Like Lucci, Hunter had gone well. It had been presented to the pills by a friend the previous year, probably not knowing that they could contain fentanyl or Nitaznes.
He had a few difficult months, but he never overdose or needed Narcan. And his personality had not changed much. From December to his death in April, he was the same son they knew and loved, said his mother at the Daily Mail.
Hunter took what had been sold to him under the name of Xanax and Percocet and fatally overdosed in April at 21. Other tests revealed that the pills were entirely made up of the same Nitazène who killed Lucci
Hunter is shown third on the left surrounded by his family. According to his mother, he was the favorite uncle of his niece
But that night in April, his parents feared that Hunter had a bad way.
“The next day, when I went to work, he slept. My husband went to check it around noon. He was sitting in his bed, ” said Clement to the Daily Mail.
“And then, when I went home, I found him in his bed, and he had to take one of each (oxycodone counterfeit and Xanax counterfeit).”
The first version, or analog, of Nitaznes, was developed in the 1950s as a powerful opioid analgesic, but has never been used in medicine because of its risk of dangerously high overdose.
But even more deadly analogues of the original, such as the N-Pyrrolidino protonitazène, which has killed Lucci and Hunter, has resurfaced since 2019, infiltrating illicit drug supplies from Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Andrew Renna, deputy director of the port for freight operations at JFK airport in New York, told customs and border protection in May: “Earlier this month, we almost seized a book in Nitazène which went to a private residence in South Carolina. He was shipped from the United Kingdom.
“Unfortunately, here at JFK, we see Xylazine and Nitazens at least a few times a week in quantities ranging from a few grams to more than one book or more.”
Hunter’s mother said he had a great sense of humor and had taken his role as uncle very seriously. He was fine in the months preceding his sudden overdose
The United States has always been imbued with an overdose crisis of opioid several years which would have killed more than 800,000 people since its beginning in 1999.
According to a report by the National Center for Health Statistics of the CDC, the deaf mortality rate of the United States decreased from four from 2022 to 2023, from 32.6 to 31.3 deaths per 100,000 people.
The decline is promising, but the growing danger of another deadly synthetic opiate eclipsed the optimism of public health officials.
With the threat of a new wave of the epidemic of opioids that takes shape, parents like McCallister and Clement channeled their sorrow in a awareness campaign by sharing the stories of their sons.
“Unfortunately, you just need a pill, or a line of something, or, the sky prohibits, in the future, a stroke of a vape,” said McCallister. “I mean, it is a very dangerous territory in which we are wading.
