Dr. Ellen Marmur: "First Cases of Flesh-Eating Drug Krokodil Surface in US"
Krokodil, a flesh-eating drug which first surfaced in Russia more than a decade ago, has reportedly been found in the United States.
Similar to morphine or heroin, krokodil is made by mixing codeine with substances like gasoline, paint thinner, oil or alcohol. That mixture is then injected into a vein, potentially causing an addict's skin to greenish, scaly and eventually rot away. This looks to me a lot like skin popping, what drug users used to do back in the day with heroin and other drugs," Ellen Marmur, MD, an Associate Clinical Professor of Dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai said. "It just kills the skin, that's what you're seeing, big dead pieces of skin." Learn more