Rare flesh-rotting drug causing crocodile-like skin found in Michigan county, cops say
A flesh-eating drug about 10 times more potent than morphine and rarely seen in the United States has been found for the first time in the Detroit metropolitan area, Michigan authorities said.
Investigators were executing a search warrant at the home of someone believed to be selling other drugs when they found desomorphine, a synthetic opioid better known as “krokodil” or “crocodil,” St. Clair County Sheriff Mat King told WJBK.
This is the first time the drug has been found by the St. Clair County Drug Task Force, the sheriff’s office said in a June 11 news release.
The street name krokodil comes from the crocodile-like appearance of users’ skin caused by drug-induced necrosis, the sheriff’s office said.
Users’ skin may look “greenish and scaly due to damaged blood vessels, thrombosis, and damaged soft tissues surrounding injection sites,” authorities said.
Krokodil can cause users’ skin to die and decay, and their limbs to swell from blood clots, which could lead to limb amputation or death, according to the sheriff’s office.
“Krokodil is often sold to users instead of heroin due to its cheap cost and powerful potency, similar to fentanyl,” the sheriff’s office said.
Authorities warn krokodil may be resistant to naloxone, a drug used to reverse opioid overdose, but it is a synthetic substance. Naloxone is also known by the brand name Narcan.
Only two drug samples submitted to the National Forensic Laboratory Information system between 2004 and 2019 were confirmed to be desomorphine, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The emergence of desomorphine on a global scale is unclear, but the DEA suggests its increase in popularity was first noted in Russia in 2009.
St. Clair County is about 60-miles northeast from downtown Detroit.
