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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."
Seems to be a somewhat self-limiting problem. Users will die off fairly rapidly.
Ahh, the soft empathic voice of Slashdot.....
TLDR; this is an incredible dumbass drug. They take codeine, which apparently is easier to get than heroin Russia, run it through some Mad Men style kitchen chemistry, don't really bother filtering it, don't have a clue about what they made then... wait for it... inject it. Bypassing every single organismal defense mechanism save for the few remaining T-cells that the user's bone marrow has scrounged up.
Violence will ensue....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Legalize heroin.
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.
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.
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.
Make it hard to get hold of pure, *relatively* safe drugs... and people end up doing shit like this...
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.
You're missing something ...
Krokodil is NOT for those wanting to get high/stoned/whatever for cheaps.
It is a drug for when everything else is just not cutting it anymore.
It is a drug for when nothing in life really matter, besides the next fix.
It is a drug for when you've accepted that you're going to die from drugs.
Krokodil is the thing users turn to when everything else has been tried, when all there is left is the pain and the high and when you're beyond the regular kind of drug-addict-gone-fucked-up.
"Dumb" has nothing, what-so-ever, to do with it.
I saw an independent Australian documentary on Krokodil in one of the southern Russian cities, like Novobirisk. The addicts (in theit teens or twenties) figured they had about a week to live, and cared about nothing, living in a garbage pile in an abandoned building. The film crew tried to observe a drug buy, but ended up being chased by someone who spotted them. It was a incredibly sad, terrifying film.
For their part, Russian officials are claiming that the Taliban is shipping cheap drugs north across the steppes in an attempt to corrupt and destabilize their cities.
I'm all for legalization of a lot of substances and ending the Violence Due To Illegalization, but this one is so over-the-top in terms of both addiction and toxicity that I don't know what a rational response could be.
John
I'm all for legalization of a lot of substances and ending the Violence Due To Illegalization, but this one is so over-the-top in terms of both addiction and toxicity that I don't know what a rational response could be
Even if drugs were legalized, this one would still be illegal, much like adding melamine to children's food is illegal. Legalizing drugs doesn't mean we have to legalize everything.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The problem with this drug isn't so much the drug as the incredibly low purity standards.
Obligatory: you don't know shit about the decision-making process of addicts. These aren't idiots fouling the gene pool. You're no smarter. Ignorant judgmental creeps like you should be culled from the gene pool -- we'd all be in a better if trivial levels of compassion were among "common sense".
Treat addiction like the disease it is, and it goes away. Encouraging addicts to off themselves only puts money into the pockets of the crooked assholes who peddle these drugs, exacerbating the problem. This drains the resources of the host society, reduces the available talent pool for the arts and sciences, and guess who can't afford birth control: addicts.
Self-righteous assholes like you are what got us to this place to begin with. May your ignorant worldview fuck off and die.
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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