Re: Krokodil--the new flesh-eating substitute for Heroin
My points were directly from Chicago news interviews with Suburban teens as well as a community meeting on Heroin/Kroc..
There is a problem. You have a huge rumor mill with no real facts when you deal with teenagers and the drug community. It may be that kroc is running through the area. It may also be that some dealers are marketing a product called kroc that is not actually that substance. It might also be that those kids have heard of kroc from the news or people who have heard of it on the news and therefor what those people are hearing is an echo. Just from being in the drug scene i know you do not trust what you hear on the street, it is a good way to die because someone he4ard something and then told you and it was all BS. It is not a malicious thing, but just that there are tons of dumbasses and rumors out there, and the people who actually knwo something are not going to talk to news reporters.
Plus the news wants to make drama and BS. Remember the guy who ate the person's face down in florida? OMG it was Bath Salts and an epidemic of them that was going to destroy all of our kids and it was the end of the world. Yeah bath salts are around, but the news neglected certain realities. First it was a cop's guess and the guy who ate the other guys face was not on bath salts at the time. The second problem is they ignore the fact people turn to dangerous highs because less dangerous alternatives are not available. Pot is not a gateway drug for most people. It is the end of the road for most users because it is good enough for them. I know tons of people who smoke pot and never go beyond it, but when you start pulling safe highs people
become more open to these alternatives. Plus, bath salts were sold from almost legit sources. Since there is such a crackdown on anything that makes you high it is assumed, improperly, that because it is presently legal that it must be safe. People forget it takes the law some time to catch up to new things, and the salts are much higher than most people even want to bother with even when legal.
Yes, i know many of us get our news from a source we expect did some investigation and put the facts together, but the news is a terrible place to get drug news. We need a reliable source of facts without the lies so people can make an educated choice about the drugs they use and the news is a failure all around. Even places that tebnd to do research are way off on drug facts because a huge amount of misinformation and lies have been spread by the authorities and things like DARE.
I would be amazed if there was real kroc going around simply because of the nature of the drug. It is highly addictive and very dangerous. You would not have 2 cases, you would have a hundred and more coming constantly. The people who do drugs like this are not your average user. They are junkies. The are people seeking a massive high. Even a person like me who has done a **** ton of drugs strays away from the heavy end. Heavy opiods, crack, high end amphetamines, and PCP like drugs are a commitment. The users of those sorts of drugs are not light users. I believe the effects of this drug are real from my research, and that tells me that if it were floating on the street in large quantities we would be hip deep in a huge problem. It would be obvious, and there would not be a question about it.
It is good to warn people, but the reality needs to be recognized that this is not an epidemic because of the right things we have done to keep heavy drugs off the street. This drug would be dangerous in america if we still had codeine cough medication. You simply cannot get it. It is not even behind the counter like pseudo ephedrine products. Doctors barely prescribe it because better alternatives are there. So if you are worried about krocodil you should be looking to things like pharmaceuticals and doctors and they are not pushing it here like in other countries. If we could convince any countries where it is readily available to pull those products and use a safer alternative like DXM we would do huge damage to this market because the key ingredient would be harder to come by. It does not even make much sense to manufacture codeine because if you were going to go through all that danger as a criminal you would be making heroin or Meth. This drug became popular not because of quality, but rather due almost completely to environment. If chicago has a problem with it they need to find where the codeine containing cough syrups are coming from, or who is pushing and manufacturing codeine. Even Russia seems to have gotten somewhat over this because they changed the environment.
I am just saying this is not like other drugs and therefor it's dangers can be minimized with thought into the efforts. Even drug users mostly will not want to screw with this because you have better safer highs. It is like an alcoholic swilling antifreeze. They do not want antifreeze, and most people are smart enough to not want kroc when they have what they want.