This drug makes Meth look like a health product.

It's nothing like leprosy. It is more akin to necrotizing fasciitis or gangrene.

On the video, how anyone can nonchalantly sit and hold their leg up whilst a doctor cheese-wires through their lower leg just beggars belief.

The guy must have lost his marbles long time ago. The actual cutting part was few minutes only, think about the many months that he must have ignored his rotting leg.

Ok. Really glad I didn't watch the video.....

As stated in the article, the medicine gets mixed up with various other substances (for instance, gasoline and lead) I can't imagine this was done to replace aspirine.

No, but there are real needs for powerful analgesics/sedatives. Pure, this drug seems to have less unpleasant and dangerous side effects than morphine (e.g. less tendency to cause respiratory depression), together with a fast onset. It's also considerably more potent, which is a boon for the unlucky few - morphine is obviously a powerful painkiller but for some it is still not enough to successfully manage pain.

This drug was produced with good intentions (combined with the aim of legitimate profit), but once the chemical structure was out there, someone found a way of making an impure form. The impurities and poor management of use are what cause the problem. The drug has a real and worthwhile use!

Article from the UK on the drugs effect.

Bloody scary!

"You're dreaming of heroin, of something that feels clean and not like poison. But you can't afford it, so you keep doing the krokodil. Until you die."

Says it all, really.

On a philosophical level if we are all going to die one day then does it matter how we go?

It is stated in the article, because it makes it a more interesting story for Blick, although in reality it is not mixed up on purpose, but a result of home-cooking the substance from otc codeine pills. Lead would be used as a catalyst in the reaction and gasoline as a purification step. The people that cook this stuff have no clue about chemistry therefore not being able (and not caring) to purify these poisonous substances away from the active drug compound.

I don't believe stuff like this will widely spread in Western Europe just as meth never did, as drug users have better alternatives and perspectives. Even acquiring it 'by accident' should not be a risk in Switzerland as several cities have services for drug testing in place as a measure of harm reduction (e.g. the DIZ in Zurich).

Also keep in mind that many of this pictures and movies are Russian state propaganda as their own idea of harm reduction...

Those who got payed for developing it didn't do that. It's the basement den labs that do that.

...and they did it for philanthropical purposes right?

But it's hardly what you'd call 'developing' the drug; rather it's just finding a quick and cheap way to make it. And while some folk may be making money out of it, it sounds like the real problem is just caused by makers/users who don't give a shit about their own bodies.

I'm not a chemist, but I strongly suspect that even with the basic methods they're using the product could easily be post-processed to purify it and remove most of the damaging compounds.

At least now I have a video to watch when I'm falling off my diet plan.

The stuff is eight times as strong as morphine, so the addiction is pretty much immediate after the first use.

The rotting part isn't as far as I understand the drug itself but the dirt and the (very aggressive and poisonous) byproducts in it - the stuff is made in a literally quick and dirty way. So "how long till one loses a leg?" must then depend on how bad the individual stuff is made.

But just for the record: The source that "it surely will somehow come to Switzerland" is BLICK. Their source that "it's already in Germany" is BILD - the German equivalent of Blick - and the four cases that were reported by Bild have by now been identified as "normal bad quality heroin" instead... the stuff has been around in Russia since 2002 and not really swamped EU streets in the last 8 years - why should it suddenly do so?

I'm disturbed now........

Sorry, but that's just nonsense. For two reasons: First, relative strength only means you need less of it for the same effect, so the physical dependency may even be lower (or it may be higher, but either way it's not related to "strength"). Secondly, even very high doses of morphine are not addictive until or unless used over a long period of time. I personally have been on very high dosage for some days following major trauma, then gradually reduced dosage over the following weeks and months. Addiction is not considered a major problem when used for medical reasons.

Anyway, "addiction" is a nebulous term. Physical and psychological dependence are the measurable terms used in the industry, and as far as I'm aware this drug hasn't been properly compared. But for both of these measures Heroin (diamorphine) is right at the top of the scale, so it is reasonable to assume that desamorphine will be too, but not that it would be higher.

Also, don't forget that by the time anyone is desperate enough to try a drug that they know will kill them (i.e. the unrefined, impure, stuff we're talking about here) they're already a long way down the route of hard-core addiction, usually to heroin.