Call it a designer drug on steroids, krokodil is a morphine derivative that is destroying people, and it may be on its way to America.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, (DEA), have their eyes on this reptilian drug madness overseas, and doesn't believe it has hit the U.S. yet DEA spokesman Rusty Payne told FoxNews.com.
Krokodil, or "despmorphine" has been making it's rounds in Russia where about 65 million doses have been confiscated in the first few months of this year according to Russia's Federal Drug Control Service as told to Time.
"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," reported FoxNews.com.
The drug is at epidemic proportions in Russia where an estimated 1 million people where injecting this concoction in 2010.
Krokodil, a take on the word crocodile, is so named because the skin at the sites of the injection turn green, and scaly from ruptured blood vessels, and then die.
Reports indicate that the drug first appeared in Siberia in 2002.
"Dr. Lewis Nelson, a medical toxicologist at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York, said he doubts krokodil will reach the United States due to the availability of other cheap, powerful drugs such as black tar heroin and Oxycontin," reported FoxNews.com.
Let's hope Dr. Lewis, and the DEA are right. If this snake of a drug reaches our kids, many of them already experimenting with research chemicals, prescription, and other drugs, krokodil will make those substances look like licking Blow Pop suckers in comparison.
Peace...
- The adolescent brain is not fully developed, making a young person extremely vulnerable to drug and alcohol addiction among other problems.
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