Krokodil Invades the USA

[mfckr]

The first cases of a terrifying new drug called 'Krokodil' that eats flesh from the inside out, is flammable and leaves addicts with reptilian-like skin have been reported this week in Arizona - and the state fears the beginning of an epidemic.

Popular in Russia, Krokodil is homemade, is three-times cheaper than heroin and created by mixing codeine with gasoline or oil, filtering it and then injecting the rancid concoction into the users body.

Banner's Poison Control Center most likely encountered the drug when two addicts arrived in emergency rooms with their flesh hanging off their body, exposing bone or with skin resembling that of a crocodile, hence its name.

More…



VICE Doc for those unfamiliar:

[lagerdemon]

natural selection, i'm for it

[ashlesha]

you would have to be pretty fucking desperate to use that for the first time, knowing what it does. i can't wrap my head around it. so are we going to see people standing at bus stops around the country looking like zombies in a few years?

[Capitalist Pig]

so are we going to see people standing at bus stops around the country looking like zombies in a few years?

you mean we don't already???

[ashlesha]

u know what i mean

[InvisibleJim]

You'd be pretty crazy. There are reports of people turning up at hospital after realising they've lost half an arm and they have a gaping wound on that stuff.

[Esaman]

People outright kill themselves. Doing hard drugs and degrading on those is less radical than that.

[Absurd]

[DaftPunk]

a bit late that arrival but crazy stuff for sure

Quite offending and idiotic to play the national anthem in the back ground btw.

[DaftPunk]

Maybe to people daft enough to take nationalism seriously.

it's not about patriotism or nationalism

[DaftPunk]

It gives me the feeling that the problem is very russia specific.

The problem with Krokodile is anyway just that the fabrication process is made very bad by most addicts

Vice reports are always an intellectual stimulation

[xerx]

let's not pass judgment too quickly... i bet you all know at least one person who should take this drug.

[lagerdemon]

bought you

[DaftPunk]

Um… given that Krokodil use has been a chiefly Russian problem and that the drug is of Russian origin (due to a combo of draconian heroin laws + readily available codeine + deep socioeconomic malaise), this isn't an inappropriate characterization.



.

Didn't knew about draconian penaltys for Heroin posession, Heroin should be not to expensive there because it's the main travelway for at least the Base Stuff for Heroin. People are able to buy Heroin with just selling old metall they found somewhere. Krokodil is Desomorphin (combined with crap stuff because of crappy fabrication) a stuff three times stronger than Heroin. Codein is also an Opiat.

English is not my native language and especially my auditive understanding is not very good. That's been said I still have the feeling that the Vice doc gives the feeling of a Boneeating drug. Desomorphin If clean and used correctly is not hurtfull to your body compared with other drugs it just makes you very addicted .

[Creepy-bg]

take home of this thread: tweakers are better than junkies at garage synthesis.

+1 for the methheads.

[ashlesha]

its just codeine and gasoline, right? it makes me really curious if just injecting codeine would make your skin rot off too.
or what would happen if you just injected gasoline. or is that just what they use to dilute it. could they use something else?
(not that i have any practical reason to know the answers to these questions)

[squirreltual]

its just codeine and gasoline, right? it makes me really curious if just injecting codeine would make your skin rot off too.
or what would happen if you just injected gasoline. or is that just what they use to dilute it. could they use something else?
(not that i have any practical reason to know the answers to these questions)

I think the skin rotting is more to do with leftover iodine and red phosphorous (reducing agents for the codeine). You could get rid of it, but I guess people end up wanting their fix asap.

[ashlesha]

http://gawker.com/illinois-sisters-s...use-1446096041

[JWC3]

We need to throw those junkies off the trail! Quick somebody dress up like water and chase them until their too tired to hurt themselves.

Everyone knows junkies hate water.

[Creepy-male]

Has anyone considered the possibility that these people don't actually know what they are injecting into themselves will do to them and that's why they do it? It's promoted to them as something new they can do and they take it from their dealer without knowing any better, then they end up in the emergency room. What are they going to do? Call the cops on their dealer for giving them bad stuff? The cops won't give a shit, and be more likely to arrest them for being a drug abuser.

[Lotus]

As a recovering heroin addict who uses from time to time to test what I'm selling, this is fucking scary. Someone could promote this shit to me as heroin. And I've heard the skin rotting only happens if you don't inject it directly into the bloodstream. Personally, I have really skinny, terrible veins so the only place I can shoot easily is in my hands or neck. And every single time, because my veins are skinny, a little bit of the dope floods back out of my vein after I shoot. With heroin it just means I have small bumps that rise up around the injection spot. I can rub at them and they go away within a half hour. If this shit it true my skin would rot for sure.

[rat1]

I say it's a conspiracy - government eugenics programs killing off heroin junkies.

[Inguz]

It is truly a "poor man's heroin". It's no secret that you'll decay if you will use it, so why do you think that it even got a spread in Russia? These people have no hope for the future and lives in shitty conditions. If anything, that this has spread to USA only speaks for how poor some people are in USA too.

And I've heard the skin rotting only happens if you don't inject it directly into the bloodstream.

Do not believe in this. It's nothing but an excuse and a justification for using/selling the drug.

[Lotus]

Yeah I wasn't sure about that either. It's not like I would ever do it

[Creepy-male]

I'm pretty sure this stuff is the result of a dealer trying to screw someone over. The name is Krokodil. The last part is pronounced like "deal" and the the reference is to a crocodile, something that sneaks up on you in a swamp predator like. I watched a documentary on Russian towns were this stuff is used. They are near the border where opium is shipped into russia from the mountainous regions to the south with Afghanistan and other places were the poppy plant grows. After the fall of the soviet union many of the places are in poverty, the old soviet factories that used to provide work are shut down and the town has no industry. The populace is impoverished and drugs and prostitution run rampart. My intuition is there is a chain of trade criminally and the middle men who transport drugs through russia use the populace on these poor border towns, due to their desperation they can turn women into prostitutes in exchange for cash, and they sell the populace bad drugs. They probably lace the stuff with gasoline and other stuff because its cheaper than the full product. They can sell it cheaper, the people get high, and they are so desperate they don't even care about the health repercussions.

I don't think its necessarily how the media makes it sound, like people are just suicidal and put bad stuff into their veins. It's only really an option for impoverished people who can't afford expensive drugs but are addicted and desperately need to get high, even if it means self-destruction. It's also a way for a dealer to screw over someone they don't like, or to sell product cheaper when pressed for a better price and screw the person over. I envision it like some junkie coming to a dealer in a bad neighborhood and is all pissed off and in need of some more stuff but doesn't have the money, the dealer offers to sell something cheaper. They take their normal stock and then dilute it with gasoline and sell it. Person shoots it up, fucks themselves up, and the dealer doesn't have to worry about them -- its not like they will loose business once the person is depleted of cash. It's not like the police are going to step into save a drug user, in their eyes they are simply all part of the same criminal element. And the media over here dumbly portrays the entire thing as "DRUGS ARE BAD!" scare tactic, and "SOME PEOPLE WILL DO ANYTHING TO GET HIGH! LOL!"... when in reality the issue is probably more complex, and at the very least requires looking at healing the epidemic in impoverished areas, legalizing some substances, and provide rehab for addicts. Rehab itself isn't just building clinics, but an entire process or chain in bad neighborhoods to provide people with pathways towards opportunities outside of drugs.

Internationally its very complex because opium farmers make their livelyhood off their yield and eradicating the crop would be leaving the farmers in poverty. Also the state of drug-use in bad neighborhoods goes beyond simple recreational use, it becomes something entirely different. It's overly idealistic to eliminate illegal recreational drug use, but the negative impacts of recreational drug use can be curbed by certain efforts that unfortunately don't happen because most people don't really have any insight into how criminal dealings work and the ones that do are usually doing the dealing.

[lemontrees]

I remember reading about this a few year's ago (the Russian phenomenon of Krokodil) and feeling extremely sad and disturbed over it.
I still feel about the same.

[Esaman]

selling

You are sure you want to be posting that?

[Lotus]

I'm a work of fiction if anyone asks