The Central Ohio Poison Center said they've gotten no calls regarding the drug in Ohio and there have been no verified cases in the U.S., although the Chicago Tribune reported last week that at least six people in the Chicago area are suspected of having used the drug.
The drug is popular in Russia where codeine is available over the counter. In the U.S. codeine must be prescribed by a physician. Because of the legal availability of the ingredients in Russia it's considered a cheaper alternative to its cousins heroin and oxycodone.
According to story in TIME magazine, a hit of the drug costs about $8 on the streets in Russia while heroin can cost up to $30 for the same amount.
In Dayton a cap of heroin - about a tenth of a gram - sells for as little as $10, according to users surveyed in the 2013 trend report by the Ohio Substance Abuse Monitoring Network.
Krokidil, the nickname for desomorphine, is clandestinely manufactured for cheap in Russia using codeine, iodine, gasoline, paint thinner, hydrochloric acid, lighter fluid and red phosphorus.
The result is an impure substance that slowly rots the body from the inside.
"When it's injected it will actually cause users to develop green or greyish scale-like material on their skin where the injection site is," said Brooke Ehlers, a forensic chemist with the Miami Valley Regional Crime Lab.
The first reports of this drug in Russia were in 2003, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Local experts said they started hearing about it in the past two years as its popularity soared in Western Europe.
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