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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."
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?
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
Nah, legalize everything.
Let God sort it out.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
Can't think of a single film where the heroine was illegal.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
Heroin overdose among experienced users with steady supplies are unheard of. Heroin is quite safe, actually. The overdose problem is usually among black-tar heroin users who inject or snort (rather than smoke or eat) who then buy white powder heroin. Black-tar heroin is very impure (20-30%), being manufactured directly from unpurified opium or poppy straw extract, while white powder heroin is very pure(80%+, unless heavily cut), being manufactured from purified morphine. Even when cut, white powder heroin tends to be at least twice a potent as black-tar. Furthermore, black-tar and white powder are misnomers; both are yellow to yellowish brown, which is how those overdoses happen.
Until recently, white powder heroin was only available in large cities such as NYC, but now it's moving West, leading to a string of overdose deaths along the east coast and as far west as Michigan.
If it were regulated and legal, this entire class of overdose deaths would be eliminated. Considering that this type of overdose death is the majority of overdose deaths in the US, we are killing people by keeping it illegal. Considering the rate of overdose deaths among long-time users, legalization would result in fewer overall deaths, even if everyone picked up the habit. Now that you know all this, you and all other prohibitionists, especially those in Congress, are engaged in willful murder.
Have fun sleeping tonight, murderer.
Like nobody dies from alchohol abuse?
Actually, you mostly die of heroin through accidental or deliberate overdose, or through associated problems like contracting HIV through a dirty IV injection needle, that are not actually related to heroin per se. Because what comes to physiological effects, opioids, such as heroin, are actually less harmful than alcohol or tobacco, even in prolonged use. There is an increased chance of infections due to the suppressing effect opioids have on the body's immune system, but that's about it.
Of course, this if you ignore the horrible consequence of extreme dependence and very difficult withdrawal from heroin (the withdrawal can actually be itself fatal), which means it's very hard to stop taking it once you get hooked on heroin. But you will not die of it, if you keep to your body's tolerance levels. Alcohol dependence could be considered much worse, because daily heavy drinking is so extremely detrimental for your health, and if you are unable to stop drinking, it will inevitably lead to a fatal failure of some vital organ, such as the liver.
Smoking, too, is very bad for your health, and safely injecting high-purity heroin a few times per day is probably less harmful in the long run than smoking a pack of cancer sticks per day. It has to be noted though, that if you decide to become a heroin addict, your life will be absolutely dominated by the graving for this substance, probably for the rest of your life. This can have devastating effects on thing many people find very important in life, such as career and family relations. Smoking addiction, on the other hand, while physically probably more unhealthy, still lets you lead a relatively normal life.
I saw an independent Australian documentary on Krokodil in one of the southern Russian cities, like Novobirisk.
Was it this: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/vice-news/siberia-krokodil-tears-full-length ? (Narrator is British, btw).
Heroin withdrawal is not fatal. Alcohol, benzodiazepines, and barbiturates are the three drug classes with life threatening withdrawal syndromes. Heroin withdrawal is still extraordinarily unpleasant, but it's not deadly.
Jeeze, did you even read the article you linked when pointing out heroin as the big bad or did you just look for the first article that had a bar graph with heroin seemingly on the top? It basically contradicts your entire attitude about heroin, and reaffirms the thought process of the person you're quoting, even if it was an exaggeration.
Here, let me quote something from your own link:
Firstly, the harms of a given drug will depend upon its legal status. The best way to demonstrate this point is with heroin, which is placed at the top of the Lancet-scale as the most harmful of all drugs. For street heroin this may well be the appropriate placing, but, if we are being scientific here, it is imperative to separate out the harms that follow from use of the drug per se, and the health and social harms exacerbated or created specifically by the drug's use within an illegal market. These, lets call them 'prohibition harms', include:
* Contaminated/cut product (poisoning, infection risks)
* Dirty/shared needles (Hep C / HIV risk)
* Vast quantities of low level acquisitive property crime to support a habit: illegal markets inflate the cost of an essentially worthless agricultural product to one that is worth more than its weight in gold. People on prescriptions don't have to nick stuff.
* Street prostitution (see above)
* Street dealing, drug-gang violence and turf wars
* Drug litter (needles in the gutter etc)
More useful would have been to rank both illegal street heroin, associated with the above harms which aren't going to help its ranking much, and prescribed pharmaceutical heroin, associated with none of the above harms. The latter would certainly be considerably further down the scale. Luckily, we can theoretically do this with heroin as both legal and illegal markets exist simultaneously in the UK, although the number of prescribed users (approx 400) is rather eclipsed by the number of illicit users (approx 250,000+). It’s a great shame the authors of this study failed to make that comparison (we do, confusingly, get 'street methadone' in the ranking, but not the prescription variety).
The harms from heroin don't generally come from heroin itself, but from the unsafe creation and use pervasive of today's users as a result of being illegal.
Alcohol is by far the worst drug. It doesn't matter in the least how many people it kills directly. It kills far more people than all the other drugs combined. Still, it remains legal in the US while we still often imprison the marijuana smoker just for having the plant. I wonder what the real difference between these drugs could be? If ever there was a classic example of "follow the money", the comparison and contrast here is it.
I am by no means suggesting that we should make alcohol illegal. The point is, anyone who argues that keeping the other drugs illegal makes sense is either brainwashed, a complete moron, someone lying directly on the money trail, or some combination of some or all of those things.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I actually read through that discussion, and believe it or not, he has a decent point, though it wasn't immediately evident. He eventually explained what the purpose of the exercise was, as well as his own stances on the issues. And contrary to his initial, inflammatory remarks, he seems like he's actually a rather rational and coherent individual who simply wanted to illustrate a problem in the most direct way possible.
For instance, he never suggested that the drug should be legalized or that climbing Everest should be outlawed (quite the opposite, in fact), though people assumed that was what he intended. Rather, his point was that we, as a society, have lost much of our capacity for evaluating risk, since the rhetoric we choose to apply to certain topics is blowing the risks involved out of proportion and blinding us to how dangerous they actually are. To demonstrate that, he made some blanket statements about climbing Everest using the sort of rhetoric that is typically reserved for describing dangerous behavior that is frowned upon, such as drug abuse. To say the least, the reaction he got was predictable: outrage, dismissal, the construction of straw men, and ad hominem attacks, rather than rational rebuttals to the facts and logic he was providing.
His point wasn't that climbing Everest should be outlawed because it is too dangerous, nor that the drugs should be legalized because there are other things we allow that are more dangerous. He was simply asking people to think critically about how the way that we present risks and have been trained to think about certain topics has colored our perceptions. I actually thought he had a rather good point, and that he did a great job of demonstrating the problem by placing himself in a position where the other commenters would construct straw men to tear down while vilifying him as a horrible person.
In truth, I actually thought it was something a lot of people here on Slashdot would appreciate, rather than something they'd laugh at, since we're supposed to value facts and truth over rhetoric and soundbites, though, at least taken out of context, I can see why it'd be seen as ridiculous. I actually started reading the discussion just because I wanted to see how ridiculous the raving lunatic would get, but then I found out that he was anything but what I had initially thought of him.
It is estimated that only about 23% of people who use heroin become dependent on it.
I'm an anesthesiologist who majored in chemistry in undergrad. Back when I thought I wanted two doctorates, I did a couple of years of work with the opioid systems of the brain. (I didn't finish the PhD, but I did put a fair number of rats through opioid withdrawal.)
Hah! Best smack-down on /. ever (tied with when NYCountryLawyer used to reply to stories about himself).
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2
Alcohol, benzos, and barbiturates all potentiate the GABAergic systems of the brain - the inhibitory pathways. Over time, the brain becomes accustomed to their presence and more or less compensates - this is why chronic alcoholics can tolerate blood alcohol levels that would be immediately fatal to most people, and how some people can actually function while taking Xanax (as opposed to having ten-hour chunks of their life simply forgotten).
However, if you abruptly discontinue these drugs when they are being regularly consumed at high doses, the resulting hyperactivity of the brain and nervous system can prove fatal - if you'd like a nice, detailed view, look up delirium tremens.
Or who funded the anti-hemp movement (lots of cotton farmers).
Actually one particular media mogul by the name of Hearst who had heavily invested in pulp paper combined with parts of government who had gained much power during prohibition and wanted to keep it after prohibition was repealed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
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).