Flesh-Eating Drug Krokodil Latest News Updates & VIDEO: D.E.A. Says Drug Not Spreading Across U.S., PHOTOS Optional
Despite several reports over the last few months of its spread across several U.S. States, DEA officials are now saying that the flesh-eating drug Krokodil is not sweeping across the country after all.
States as far apart as Utah, Oklahoma, Arizaona, Ohio, Illinois and even New York reported hospital patients coming in with the effects of the flesh-eating drug. Tests on the substances the patients claimed they used have all tested negative for the harmful and destructive narcotic.
DEA officials now believe the cases were all in fact infections from sharing used needles while users injected themselves with heroin.
Jack Riley, the special agent in charge of the DEA's Chicago field office, told the Northwest Herald agents were buying heroin in five neighboring states and lab-testing it for krokodil. All tests have come back negative.
"At this point we do not have any samples that have come back positive," he said. "We have not seen it. That doesn't mean we're not aggressively trying to identify it. We just haven't seen it."
Flesh-Eating Drug Krokodil Spreads Across U.S.?
Testing in the Chicago area specifically came after two sisters from Joliet, Ill., said they were using the drug for at least a year and a half and have since suffered from several skin disfigurations as a result of the drug.
Amber Neitzel, 26, and Angela Neitzel, 29, claimed they had used the drug thinking it was heroin. They preferred using it because it was a tenth of the price of normal heroin and gave them an intense high.
See photos -- WARNING: Content is graphic -- here.
Krokodil hails from Russia and is a reportedly cheap alternative to heroine made from a combination of pure codeine and household synthetics, like paint thinner and gasoline. The drug gets its name because users who inject it into themselves can begin to suffer from dried lesions on the skin similar to the scales on crocodiles. Users can potentially kill themselves with the drug within a couple of years, faster than those who die from the effects of heroin use and do not overdose.
The only confirmed death from the drug occurred in Oklahoma, where 33-year-old Justin McGee died as results of complications when the effects of the drug became too intense. He was treated in a hospital bed unit until his death, according to The Daily Mail.