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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.
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?
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.
Oh, sure, but if someone tries to climb Mt. Everest and ends up losing their fingers, toes and half their face to frostbite, it was an exhilarating human adventure, eh?
Mt. Everest kills a higher percentage of its users than methamphetamine.
Though, okay, I suppose injecting gasoline into your veins is a pretty bad idea.
That guy should join a debate club because he would win after his opponents all fell over laughing.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
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
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.
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.
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."
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).
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.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
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
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.
Based on what's happened to people I know, especially to one close friend who was very gifted, I can tell you that anyone can lose their way or be forced off the path.
In my opinion, those who possess rare mental or creative gifts seem to be much more susceptible.
Horrifying as the images of Krokodil images are, it's really a testament to the destructive power of addiction.
It's easy to theorize that this is just winnowing out the useless but that ignores so much history where talented and wealthy individuals have destroyed their lives through addiction.
Regardless of how superior you believe yourself to be, these people need help and compassion; not to be marginalized as convenient practitioners of auto-eugenics.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
...drug consumes addict.
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).