Krokodil: Russian homebrew heroin makes DEA watch list
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Russia's heroin epidemic has taken a garage-chemistry turn. Poor heroin addicts are turning to meth-lab ingenuity to turn OTC drugs into desomorphine so they can shoot it. An article called Krokodil: The drug that eats junkies in the Independent last week has set off a wave of international interest. Krokodil, or "crocodile", is apparently nastier than heroin, leaving junkies husked out and covered with scabs.
It is a drug for the poor, and its effects are horrific. It was given its reptilian name because its poisonous ingredients quickly turn the skin scaly... Photographs of late-stage krokodil addicts are disturbing in the extreme. Flesh goes grey and peels away to leave bones exposed. People literally rot to death.
Anyone see these photos? I can't find them online. Drug scare of the week? [NOTE: See links in comments section below for photos] Here's what the DEA has to say:
"We're looking at it overseas, but we have not seen it yet in the U.S.," DEA spokesman Rusty Payne told FoxNews.com. "But we would not be surprised when that day comes."
To produce the potentially deadly drug, which has a comparable effect to heroin but is much cheaper to make, users mix codeine with gasoline, paint thinner, iodine, hydrochloric acid and red phosphorous. Codeine, a controlled substance in the United States used to treat mild to moderate pain, is widely available over the counter in Russia.
[Thanks Sam Hell!]
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Recently @ DoseNation
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It's unlikely to be found in the US unless perhaps in isolated areas at the end of the 'heroin pipelines' where heroin is available enough to generate pockets of addiction but expensive and unobtainable enough to prove incentive towards something like this. Would need to be near the Canadian border for codeine sourcing, possibly Minnesota, Michigan.. It's much more likely that Canada would find a problem--my guess is communities north of Edmonton and Saskatoon if I were going to squint and estimate.
Russians really seem to have a tradition of self-destruction... Krokodil users aren't much different from extreme alcoholics, it just shocks more.
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