Slashdot Mirror
First Cases of Flesh-Eating Drug Emerge In the United States
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Having spent the last decade wreaking havoc in Russia, a flesh-eating drug called Krokodil has arrived in Arizona, reports Eliza Gray at Time Magazine. The Banner Poison Control Center has reported the first two users of the drug which makes user's skin scaly and green before it rots away [Warning: Graphic Images]. Made of codeine, a painkiller often used in cough syrup, and a mix of other materials including gasoline, paint thinner, and alcohol, Krokodil become popular in Russia because it costs 20 times less than heroin and can be made easily at home. Also known as Desomorphine, Krokodil has sedative and analgesic effects, and is around 8-10 times more potent than morphine. When the drug is injected, it rots the skin by rupturing blood vessels, causing the tissue to die. As a result, the skin hardens and rots, sometimes even falling off to expose the bone. 'These people are the ultimate in self-destructive drug addiction,' says Dr. Ellen Marmur. 'Once you are an addict at this level, any rational thinking doesn't apply.' The average life span of a Krokodil user is two to three years, according to a 2011 TIME investigation of the drug's prevalence in Russia."
Seems to be a somewhat self-limiting problem. Users will die off fairly rapidly.
I think the availability of this substance should be encouraged. If anyone is supremely dumb enough to inject this into themselves, our overall gene pool can only benefit as a result.
the drug apparently needs some work....
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I didn't read the article, but I did watch a documentary on this. The drug is not flesh eating per se, it is just supposed to be injected IV and if you miss and inject subcutaneously it causes necrosis. At least that was my understanding.
Legalize heroin.
So where do the side effects (of rotting skin, etc.) come from? The active ingredient itself?
If not, this is in fact a strong argument against blanket-banning of drugs (a long-term favorite of US and US-backed international policy makers), since criminalising encourages home making, impure drugs, uncontrollable use, and so on, and so forth.
The alternative is to decriminalise use, then regulate, and make sure people who lose themselves in drugs get the help they need to get back on their feet. Like Portugal did, and does. But the US won't like that because then it can't go on waging war on drugs. And that would cut into the DEA's playtime. Can't have that, now can we?
Hey, if someone wants to take this garbage, who am I to stop them? I'd say it's a decent way to get rid of a few imbeciles.
Da derp dee derp da teedly derpee derpee dum. Rated PG-13.
If we treated addiction like the disease it is instead of moralizing it as a crime, we could help these people become productive members of society again instead of driving them to slow suicide. If safe drugs were available in free clinics and addicts received treatment, nobody would choose krokodil, nobody would be robbed for drug money, gangs would have one less source of funding, and these victims would be able to overcome their disease.
Finally, a weapon against our reptilian overlords.
Krokodil become popular in Russia because it costs 20 times less than heroin
Wow, even once less than heroin would seem like a bargain.
Wow. Just wow!
Captcha reads: painless
I seriously doubt that.
I'd give a Krokodil user more credit than a writer for Time any day of the week.
And dirty injectables are nothing new.
What is also nothing new is media hype over another killer drug that is probably 90% hype and the 10% real damage is collateral to drug war unintended (intended) consequence.
I've found drugs users are never as self-destructive as reported in media and if something starts spreading on the street is because the risk benefit makes sense. Which means the scaremongering must be ratcheted up.
I await face biting crack baby history to prove the media yet again wrong.
for Halloween
We'd all be better off if you we just legalized/regulated the old stuff, as it would prevent this new, more harmful stuff from ever being created at all.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The countries where this is actually problem, codeine is available OTC. This isn't the case here in the US. It's probably easier for people here to get their hands on heroin.
Stupidity isn't necessarily required to use this - that is just if you don't know or consider what you're putting yourself in for. A lack of value for your own life could also suffice. Like suicide bombers who may really undervalue their life more than holding their cause at extremely high values. I understand that there can be very pretty dark places where one would knowingly take some temporary relief for horrific side effects. Slow form of suicide essentially.
Someone please tell me this is an Onion story.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
sit back and respect the chemistry
So no, it's not any good.
I have no intention trying to stop people from eating chocolate or drinking tea or coffee either.
Something needs to be made clear. Desomorphine itself does not rot flesh. With a little extra work the solution can be purified and there are users that DO take the time to do this. It's when the solution is simply thrown together and 'cooked down' that health problems occur. Street level users making it on their own don't take the time to purify it.
The Blade Itself
Can I make a beowulf cluster of Krokodil?
Pure c1ommunism has no more answers that pure capitalism.
The ideal is somewhere between. Where capitalism reigns for all luxury goods and services, but the basic necessities are made available by the state, either directly as the case for utilities and healthcare should be, or indirectly with a non means tested basic income system that provides enough income to every household for a meager subsistence.
is it didn't land in Florida first.
It is not the drug (desomorphine) that kills, it is the impurities, mostly silica put into the codeine pills to poison people who try to make illicit drugs out of them. It is the government that is killing people by requiring these adulterants.
X costs 20 times what Y costs: X = 20Y
X costs 20 times more than Y: X = (20 + 1)Y
so the reciprocal should be 1/21
but if it really was 1/20, why not just say "only 5% of the cost of heroin"?
Legalize and tax all non-flesh eating drugs. Thin the herd and balance the budget at the same time. Win-win.
Make it hard to get hold of pure, *relatively* safe drugs... and people end up doing shit like this...
For the short term high here to be worth your flesh rotting off? I can only imagine you start on the good stuff and descent to this, like an alkie starting on top shelf and descending to drinking aftershave.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Anyone who uses something so destructive to his own body has a sick and twisted soul. But the good response to a twisted soul is not to say they deserve what is done to their body, anymore than the good response to a sick body is to say that it deserves to be separated from its soul. The good response is to seek the healing of both.
I do not believe in the drug war, but neither do I agree with those who would scoff, shrug, and say that it doesn't matter. Some of the comments in this vein are lacking in compassion and in humanity. I cannot see a great distinction in kind, though perhaps their is some difference in degree, between the mind of the inhumane person who would be rid of those who would harm themselves and the mind of the diseased man who would take drugs to rid him of himself. Both are antithetical to life.
I do not believe in the drug war because the fighting metaphor is taken too literally. A drug war ought to be fought as we fight diseases, with treatment and medicine meant to heal, rather than as we fight foreign enemies, with guns and internment.
I do not believe in the drug war because there are people willing to take a drug like this, a drug whose very name indicates its self-destructive potential, and therefore I cannot believe that the nightmare of the prison system or the fear thereof would end such self-abuse. Whether people do such drugs out of desperation or vice, punishment can have little positive effect on those whose recreation looks nightmarish to a person of ordinary psychology. They need help and help directed at the root of the problem. And since this becomes a political question, I would add that I would sooner taxes be spent helping people awaken from old nightmares than wake up to new ones. I do not believe in the drug war, but I do believe that we should do what we can to heal diseases of the mind which accept the destruction of the body.
Article sayes First Cases of blah blah blah and http://www.google.com/patents/US1980972
I feel so like Breaking Bad right now.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
Didn't they stop adding codeine to cough syrup, like 40 years ago? At least in the US? When I was a very young kid, all the TV commercials for cough syrup emphasized that they were "non-narcotic" and thus much safer. If junkies can get their hands on codeine or cough syrup with codeine in it, isn't that good enough? I guess not.
The grossness factor of this drug compared to our elected leaders, and corporate lobby is nothing. Lots of blood on are their hands.
It is actually the various acid (i.e. chlorihydric) used to fabricate the sutff. It is quite mentionned clearly in the linked articles.
Desomorphine itself, while highly addictive, doesn't seem to be the cause of the horrific symptoms of "krocodil" use. Like many other street drugs, the worst of the negative effects are caused by the lack of regulation and dodgy manufacturing conditions.
If pharmaceutical grade opiates were available to addicts, nobody would willingly inject this gasoline-laden crap into their body.
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i guess a few cold beers and the occasional bit of pot just isnt enough for some people, getting a buzz wont do it for them, they gotta go to marz and self destruct along the way
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Why on earth would the Taliban give one flying *bleep!* about what happens in freakin' Siberia? This crap isn't even made from illegal drugs; it's made from Codeine, which is avail. OTC in Russia (and many other countries, for that matter.)
In any case, if drugs were legal, this witch's brew simply would not exist. There would be no need for it to be specifically made illegal because nobody in their right mind would use this over actual Morphine, Heroin, Hydrocodone, whatever... or even if they did use it, it would be something out of an actual drug factory, not some horrible mix of petrochemicals, phosphorus, and iodine out of some junkie's basement.
Right, and then let's start mixing it into aids victims treatments, and then let's mix it into the food at homeless shelters, and then let's coat welfare checks with it, and then let's let's let's...
And then let's... http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
rage, rage against the dying of the light
artificial stimulants in order to make it tolerable.
Commented the nerdling from his likely under lit computer lair. They just chose to do things that ACTUALLY make them feel good, instead of beating it to shemale porn and playing the latest electronic dopamine addiction/reward pathway simulation ^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^V video game.
This is likely a good time to talk up Insite, a "safe injection" site in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
The premise of Insite is simple: provide a clean, safe place for addicts to shoot up, under medical supervision. Insite doesn't provide drugs, but at least it offers some kind of controlled environment for injection.
The upshot is ten years of servicing addicts, and not one death. It Just Works.
Of course our law 'n' order neo-con Harper government is determined to shut it down, crying "Think of The Children" while pocketing donations from the big US private prison companies...
Three Squirrels
When this particular drug was/is sold as a prescription (wikipedia says it's still for sale in Switzerland), I imagine it's not full of Phosphorus, Gasoline, etc. by the time it gets administered.
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Wouldn't the person in the second picture be in so much pain they would basically need to be put into a coma? Or wouldn't they get an infection from the exposure or something like that?
We need to legalize, because;
1. it's a matter of freedom - what I want to do, so long as I don't force myself on others, is up to me
2. so horrors like this don't need to happen.
3. because the direct cost of keeping the drug-convicted population is jail is some tens of percent of typical State budgets, and the indirect costs are huge - all those people *not* working, *not* with their families, having their lives ruined
Gasoline, paint thinner, and alcohol... I know a lot of "every day things" made out of the same materials as these....
Is hard at work.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Where's Robocop when we need him ?!
Are you in favor of legalizing e-coli laden beef for sale?
Are you in favor of legalizing unregulated antibiotics of unknown strength?
Are you in favor of legalizing pork sales with trichinosis?
There is a reason we have some regulations, because without them, bad things happen. So saying, "I am in favor of legalizing drugs" does not mean you also have to favor legalizing Krokodil.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Malnutrition is one of the more dangerous/deadly effects of opiate/heroin use. It suppresses appetite to the point it makes people susceptible to malnutrition related diseases and sicknesses. Have you ever seen a fat junkie (aside from Rush Limbough)? No. They don't exist. A lot of junkies get sick and die because their bodies are too week from malnutrition.
Sure they would. People die every day from alcohol and its legal.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If people are willing to go to these lengths just for a buzz, wouldn't it be better just to let them have narcotics that will give them what they want without eating their flesh away and making them an even greater burden on society?
We've already learned that people addicted to opiates can live crime-free, productive lives if they aren't made de facto criminals, so really, what's the harm in them being able to buy pharmaceutical opiates at market prices without a prescription?
Before they die, I wonder what the average "krokodil" user costs society in medical treatment and welfare, not to mention their families. Prohibition was tried and deemed a disaster, so why do we still criminalize drugs and drug users?
You are welcome on my lawn.
If pharmaceutical grade opiates were available to addicts, nobody would willingly inject this gasoline-laden crap into their body.
That's like saying that if healthy, tasty food were available to Americans then nobody would willingly ingest fat/sodium-laden crap fast food into their body.
As long as crap can be cheaper and/or more conveniently accessible people will buy it.
there's no words to say the shock i was just dealt. freaking destroy the links to the images .NOONE NEEDS TO SEE THIS .
It is appalling to see so many people blaming users for the results of a policy Americans keep voting for. This is a public health outcome of the "War on Drugs", which, like any other war on a thing, is really just a war on people.
Blaming addicts is a craven political tactic used by powerful incumbents to protect their incomes: Local and federal law enforcement agencies who's funding depends on drug prohibition, privatized prisons and their lobbies, grandstanding politicians who campaign on "getting tough" on things, and gangsters and smugglers all have a vested interest in the status quo. The outcome cannot improve until we refuse to be duped, demand reform.
Desperate users who are already opioid addicts are exploited by sellers of krokodil, they are not normal healthy people who "choose to try it". It is unreasonable to assume that users of this substance have given informed consent to be poisoned; they do not enjoy the same autonomy that you and I do, they are desperate, and they are not easily able to evaluate the quality or authenticity of black market drugs.
Drug prohibition is economically nonsensical. It is an explicitly stated aim of law enforcement to increase the street price of narcotics. Therefore, prohibition incentivizes the black market and makes users less safe and more desperate. Black market opioids are expensive and contaminated _because_ they are criminalized, and the desperation of addicts is exacerbated by our policy. We have deliberately created a situation where heroine costs $250 per gram and addicts must choose between getting DT's and robbing houses.
Drug prohibition is predicated on the ideas that narcotics diminish our autonomy, and that we are all susceptible to addiction to some degree. It is incoherent to support prohibition and blame addicts at the same time. It's also hypocritical. How many of you have consumed a pharmaceutical opioid or other narcotic, and thereby chosen to risk addiction?
We are not morally or intellectually superior to addicts. Moreover, blame is no solace to the millions of people who are imprisoned, killed by gangsters, or poisoned, and it is cruel, pedantic, and beneath us... oh wait, this is slashdot.... but seriously:
Even if we don't care an iota for the welfare of drug users, we ought to resent the fact that we are footing the bill for a colossal boondogle which is perverting our legal system, and destabilizing neighboring states.
Krokodil is a market outcome of drug prohibition. We should stop voting for it.
"Most do-gooding reminds me of treating hemophilia-the only real cure for hemophilia is to let hemophiliacs bleed to death before they breed more hemophiliacs."
Codeine (the main precursor to krokodil) is already prescription-only in the US, so the precursors aren't cheap and available. So there's no great advantage for opiate addicts; they seem more likely to stick with oxy, heroin, or other already-common opiates that kill you somewhat slower and without the flesh-eating side-effcts.
Didn't they learn from TV that the only drug suppliers you can rely on are chemistry teachers?
...drug consumes addict.
...as evolution in action.
This sounds more like something from a cyberpunk novel. Gimme a break!
slashdot is now 2-3 years late with the news ... -.-
It can be really good stuff, if you start with decent ingredients and keep everything clean, and it's trivially easy to make, compared with making beer. However, you can probably do it badly instead :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
regulations are there to give a venear of legitimacy to governments so the have an excuse to take your money.
Nothing in the constitution mentions trichonosis.
--
roman_mir blocked by the mod's again
Sure, go for it. I'm a vegetarian.
Or when Breaking Bad merge with a Zombie series...
Breaking Dead sounds cool as a title, very pictural...
Or, in the long run it's a self correcting problem.
That isn't what he said at all. He said if they could get the clean stuff ie: beef without ecoli, pure antibiotics, trichinosis free pork, then this shit wouldn't even have to be made in the first place. What side are you arguing besides the straw men side?
The problem with that approach is that it puts the burden of work on the people who want more than a meager subsistance. That may seem fine, but as the burden of work on those people increases, they tend to drop out, which increases the burden of work for those remaining, accelerating the process. Eventually the whole house of cards collapses.
"a costs 20 times less than b"
a = b - 20b
simplify
a = -19b
...mod parent down.
For a website that prides itself on the scientific approach, this is the most sensationalist article I've ever read.
As others have pointed out, this is a stellar example of natural selection in action. Maybe the stupid will kill themselves off before they have a chance to reproduce. I say this as an avid marijuana smoker and an avid alcohol drinker.
Corn syrup.
I am Russian (though live in Baltimore), and kept a constant eye on the news about Krokodil for about last 10 years or so.
One thing that was no in the article and rarely mentioned is why pharma. drugs containing codeine were so readily available ???
As it turned out, Russian pharmaceutical company "FarmStandart" () basically flooded the market with drugs containing codeine. Firm had direct "ties" with minister of heath Golikova () (Google for ).
In 2011 all the codeine drugs were sold only by prescription !!! As a result, sales of those drugs fell drastically.
Guess, what have happened to ??? As of May, company lost 40% of it's value (http://newsland.com/news/detail/id/1212125/), since it planning to sell or spin-off it's over the counter drugs division.
Bitch should be hanged with rest of FarmStandart managers and owners.
Pay for it with my tax dollars. Give it to anyone who wants it, above the age of 14.
It's "more... THAN", you American cretin...
Oddly, this drug is NOT coming from Russia, but from China. Sad. But, China is at war with the west and even with Russia.
Are you kidding? Almost everyone wants more than a meager subsistence. Your premise is flawed.
I am certain we can come up with something that works faster than 3 years.
Profit. A pint and a half of laudanum from sears for 5 cents, Is the very best thing we could go back to.
For the cops/ambulance people who have to clean up those bodies. At least most other drugs leave decent corpses (not necessarily any worse than the typical accidental death corpse).
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
A drug that causes scaly green skin and is called crocodile? Ok, I have to admit that I had to look up that this isn't an early/late April fools joke.
regulations are there to give a venear of legitimacy to governments so the have an excuse to take your money.
Nothing in the constitution mentions trichonosis.
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roman_mir blocked by the mod's again
The founders probably thought it was a States right to regulate trichinosis. Lots of regulations are done at a more local level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
If I am not going to correct c1ommunism, i am not likely to fix that.
Life in Russia sucks, and it doesn't surprise me at all that this was developed there and gained such widespread use. I bet the rural population was hit particularly hard by this drug.
I also won't be surprised if it finds a receptive userbase in US cities.
Almost 500 messages of this marginal event. Why?
No one knows what pure communism would solve, or pure capitalism for that matter.
Humans are not good at doing "pure". If there are rules, there needs to be someone with more power than the general population who can enforce these rules. This person or group of people are going to game the system for their own advantage.
PS on paper the system you described is a pure version of modern china (communist base with capitalism now neatly folded over the top for the upper classes). However as china demonstrates, those in power can still screw the common person.
Krokodil should be legalized!
Keep scratching. That'll save ya...
the problem with Krok isn't the drug, it's the impurities and how cheap & easy it is to make. In a completely free market ''entrepreneurs" could make Krok and sell it as heroin. Sure, they'd get found out. But Russia's a big place and they could just move every time the heat got too much.
The Socialist in my says this wouldn't happen if people weren't trying so hard to escape from the brutal reality of our dog eat dog society.
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and you actually hit on the reason why when you mentioned rich vs poor people's drugs. A lot of these people have serious chemical imbalances in their brains. They aren't taking heroin because they lack moral fiber and they can't "Pray it away". They're self medicating. See this comic for anyone that doubts.
As for action, why would Russian need to do anything? From a practical standpoint these people have little or no impact on the general populace. They die quickly and mostly keep to themselves. In order to take action Russia would have to move away from Libertarian ideals of "Free choice" and towards Socialism (hopefully real Socialism and not the phoney kind loved by Fascists).
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These people are going to be the zombies.
This is the first time I've heard of a realistic source for zombies in the future of the world. There won't be many, but they will be pretty nasty.
Mates, the pictures are as real as Micheal Jackson's nose.
For fuck's sake, the chick lifting her arm looks as if she were bored to dead... And the pieces of yellow stuff look totally PAINTED, with a brush. The bone looks like something cooked, I dare say it's a beef bone from a stew with a steak pasted one layer below... and the Green Hand... The household products in this case haven't been used for making a drug but for making a cheap halloween make up.
The question is: does this drug work only in RGB or also in CMYK?
-- 29A the number of the Beast
... if /. will be the first site to have flesh-eating posts.
This combination doesn`t exist: ETIs that know about humanity and want to see us dead. Otherwise we wouldn't exist.
Nice Article and so I Like this ...
The Vice documentary provides enough information for a thoughtful person to realize how bad things can be for someone, that they would take this road. This drug (Krok) is the most destructive one have ever heard of. This drug is truly evil.
For christ sake get you damn facts right. It's not the drug that eats flesh, it's the contaminants from "home cooking" the drug!!
Just say no.
desomorphine isn't so bad if you purify it, or at least take a lot of the crap out like alkanes it's often cooked in. Krokodil is bad due to the lack of purifying step, I first heard of it a year ago but deso has been used in likes of Australia due to heroin shortages for much longer just not in such a dirty form hence lack of necrosis associated with it now.
My degree was in biochem but even I know enough drug purification techniques to separate enough of the desomorphine from the crap and generally it wouldn't be so bad for you even IV, so i'm surprised no-one street level has figured out something similar. I mean even cynical view the customers live longer you sell more. The active ingredients are fine in right does, the impurities downright nasty and some of the adulterants/deliriants are not so great for the body such as the eye drops it's mixed with.
Some adulterants are not so bad in opiates such as diphenhydramine (1st gen antihistamine to make it dreamy feeling) and benzos etc although much of the heroin and opiates knocking around on the street has too much shit like that in hence many users I know say the nod off it is shit but alright legs (duration of the hit). Obviously stuff like temazepam mixed in also cuts the craving somewhat and is noddy still so means you can drop the amount of actual gear in the mix. Some of the bulking agents are ok like lactose but some is downright shitty to cut with, there are always some too. Recent outbreak around city centre where i live of heroin with suboxone in (the buprenorphine is fine but the naloxone causes major issues when injected and has killed or hospitalised a few local addicts and a lot of outreach workers I know are warning about the batch).
lots and lots of old people (40+) are finding themselves completely unemployable, especially back East in places like Detroit. Doctor's are giving them bogus 'disabilities' so they don't starve to death and die on the streets, but the right wing is already going after them...
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I am an active heroin user; have been for the past 11 years. I have also held accomplished jobs in IT for the past 11 years as well. Let me describe to you the rationale behind this drug - opiate withdrawal is very nasty. While people are saying it cannot be fatal you're wrong. I know people that have died from embolisms etc. When you're "dope sick", your body sweats but is hot and cold at the same time, your skin crawls, your nose constantly runs and you sneeze constantly. You can't sleep, your legs are restless, your bones actually hurt, your blood is itchy. It's pure hell. All of a sudden, a drug pops up while you're sick, that you can purchase for mere pennies on the dollar and it gets you well. Bingo, when you don't have the money for heroin, this is the next best thing - but now you always are buyin this krokodil shit because its cheaper
Desomorphine does not cause these problems, it is the poor chemistry methods they use, from the doco's I've seen about it, most of them just mix all the chemicals together and boil down, rather than doing a liquid-liquid extraction to get just the good stuff out. I only saw one doco where the cooks were doing a proper separation.
strong acid will definately dissolve all the flesh around the injection site.
Strange that this story should come out just before Zombie Season. Maybe it's just publicity. Zombies aren't so funny now, are they?
Yes they would. Krokodil addicts want krokodil. They keep going back to it, and in their condition, they're hardly able to go down to the local clinic to get a safe alternative. Not everyone using krokodil is an addict that would rather be taking something else. Many are thrill seekers looking to experience increasingly more potent highs. That's the allure of krok.