Health authorities ‘frightened' after ‘Zombie' drug cases appear in Arizona
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The flesh-eating drug Krokodil has appeared in Arizona,
frightening health officials. Photo Courtesy guardiantv/com
Krokodil – the Russian word for crocodile – has “decimated whole cities” in that country. The terrifying drug is known as the “flesh-eating” or Zombie drug because it rots the flesh of users.
The Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix has had two cases of what doctors believe to be Krokodil-induced deaths this week, and that prompted a warning to other poison centers in America.
“This is up there as one of the craziest new trends I’ve seen,” Dr. Frank LoVecchio of the Banner Poison, Drug and Information Center told ABC News. “We’ve know about it in Russia and we’ve known what it has done here. It’s really decimated whole cities there. [We are] extremely frightened.”
Krokodil gives an enormous but short-lived high – more powerful than morphine – and it eats the flesh and can affect the brains of users, who usually die within two years.
The attraction is that it is cheap to make, with inexpensive items easily obtained at local drug stores and hardware outlets.
Manufacturing can be done at home, usually using a codeine base from which deomorphine is extracted and mixing it with iodine and red phosphorus and gasoline or paint thinner, Canada.com reported.
The mixture is then injected by needle. Highly addictive, it also produces ghastly side effects.
The area where the skin is injected turns green and scaly and can result in gangrene, Mother Jones reported. In some cases it rots the skin away, leaving the bone underneath exposed. It also causes speech impediments, jerky movements and, combined with the rotting flesh due to the acidic nature of the drug, has led some media outlets to call Krokodil the “Zombie drug,” Mother Jones said.
Heroin addiction is rampant in Russia, but because of a government crackdown, the supply has shriveled up during the last decade and the cost has skyrocketed, driving addicts toward cheap Krokodil, the Las Vegas Guardian Express reported.
Now, it is here in the United States.
“Once you start using this drug, on a daily basis, you could die within two years,” LoVecchio told ABC News.
But Leslie Bloom, the chief executive officer of DrugFreeAZ.org, said at this point, it is too early to be unduly alarmed about a possible outbreak of Krokodil.
“We don’t want the public to be alarmed,” she said, as reported by ABC. “We want them to be aware that this is a trend. There are other drug trends, too, that we see from time to time…. This is a good reminder and a teaching moment.”
Sources:
Canada.com: http://o.canada.com/2013/09/27/everythin
ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/20
Mother Jones: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/09/
Las Vegas Guardian Express: http://guardianlv.com/2013/09/russia-her
Barry Ellsworth is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada,
and is an Anchor for Allvoices.
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