Two cases have recently been reported in the Phoenix area.
“As far as I know, these are the first cases in the United States that are reported. So we’re extremely frightened,” Dr. Frank LoVecchio, the co-medical director at Banner’s Poison Control Center, told the TV station. “Where there is smoke there is fire, and we’re afraid there are going to be more and more cases.”
Fortunately local health officials in Montgomery County do not believe the drug known for leaving users’ bones exposed has made its way to this area.
Bill Wharton, the public information officer for Public Health Dayton & Montgomery County, said local drug officials are aware of the deadly drug, but there are no known local Krokodil users.
That’s a good thing as all indications are that Krokodil is as horrible as it sounds.
Blood vessels are destroyed.
Usage can leads to gangrene and amputation as the user's flesh is eaten away by the acidic chemicals in this highly addictive drug from Siberia and other parts of Russia called "the dirty cousin of morphine" in a 2011 Time magazine article.
Considered an inexpensive substitute for heroin— it is more potent and about a tenth of the cost — Krokodil is regarded as "the drug that eats junkies" in an 2011 article from The Independent.
The International Business Times likens its usage in Russia to the 'Zombie Apocalypse.'
An official in 2011 estimated that about 100,000 people — about 5 percent of Russian drug users — were addicted to Krockdil and other homemade drugs. The mortality rate is extremely high.
People who frequently use the street drug typically die of horrific infections within two or or three years as a sort of pre- death decomposition takes hold.
If that's not enough to avoid Krokodil like a flesh-eating bacteria consider its gnarly ingredients: codeine, lighter fluids, gasoline, paint thinner, alcohol, and other toxins.
Krokodil is the name of the homemade street version of desomorphine, an opiate analog invented in 1932 in the United States. Desomorphine is much more potent than morphine.
Contact this blogger at arobinson@DaytonDailyNews.com or Twitter.com/DDNSmartMouth
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