Flutterby™! : "Krokodil"

So the current media drug scare of the moment is this "imported from Russia" drug "krokodil" that, if you believe the headlines, is allegedly causing people to turn up in emergency rooms with their skin falling off. No links, because it's largely the product of bored news directors trying to find something to run, and probably an "anti-drug" organization finding that they need a new moral panic to keep the funding sources flowing.

Yeah, if you have people synthesizing desomorphine from codeine using strong alkalis, and things like gasoline and red phosphorous, trying to determine the end of the reaction by scent and visual observation, and then injecting it without sterile equipment, you can get necrotizing fasciitis, MRSA and other nasty infections. Go figure.

Anyway, International Journal of Drug Policy: Breaking worse: The emergence of krokodil and excessive injuries among people who inject drugs in Eurasia, Grundemail, Latypov, and Harris (2013) if you want to know more about it.

Via a Metatalk.MetaFilter thread talking about how user "gingerbeer"s comments in a thread were what made the thread keeping around, starting with this comment.