* From a story in the Joliet paper last month…

The flesh-eating crocodile is here, a local doctor said.

Three patients have been treated this week at Presence Saint Joseph Medical Center for using a synthetic opiate that doctors say rots the skin from the inside out.

“If you want to kill yourself, (using) this is the way to do it,” said Dr. Abhin Singla, director of addiction services.

Crocodile, which also is spelled Krokodil, started being manufactured about a decade ago in Russia, where heroin is harder to find, Singla said.

Codeine tablets are mixed with gasoline, paint thinner, butane and other chemicals to create an injectable drug, he said.

* But the Daily Beast claims stories like that one are bogus.

First of all. codeine has been available over the counter in Russia for years, and codeine tablets are used to make the drug. Codeine is only available here by prescription, making it harder to get and more expensive to purchase than in Russia.

And, oh, tests for Krokodil are coming up negative…

(N)ot one of the dozens of suspected cases tested positive for desomorphine, the drug’s official name. In fact, according to public-health experts and federal officials, the great Krokodil scare of 2013 is really just the latest symptom of a true epidemic long in the making: American’s growing dependence on heroin and prescription painkillers. […]

“To date none of our forensic labs have analyzed an exhibit that contain desomorphine [Krokodil],” Rusty Payne, a spokesperson for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration told The Daily Beast this week. “We have nothing to indicate that it’s out there.” Payne called the Krokodil fiasco the “story of the month,” blaming it both on misinformation and myths propagated by the media. “What happens is people jump the gun,” Payne explains. “Poison controls, emergency rooms, cops—folks that aren’t trained in narcotics,” he says. “We [the DEA] are knee deep in local synthetic drugs. This is what we do.” […]

As widely documented on drug policy sites across the web, intravenous drug users are susceptible to a wide range of deadly infections, including HIV, Hepatitis, B/C, and MRSA—many of which can result in gangrenous skin, deep abscesses, and loss of limbs.

“We don’t have a Krokodil epidemic, we have a heroin and painkiller epidemic,” Dr. Andrew Kolodny, chief medical officer at Phoenix House, a non-profit alcohol and drug rehab center, tells The Daily Beast. A nationally recognized psychiatrist, Kolodny has spent close to 20 years studying substance abuse and addiction. The graphic images flooding the Internet with “Krokodil” tags didn’t shock him. “This is not a new problem. Drug users are prone to skin infections and blood infections. There are serious medical infections that come from injecting drugs,” he says. While the infections are not new, Kolodny says increased heroin dependence means it won’t be the last time we see pictures like these.

* And this was buried way deep in an ABC7 story about the supposed Will County cases…

All three women insist they paid for heroin and never knew they got crocodile in its place. They have come forward to use their story as a wakeup call for other addicts. [Emphasis added.]

Except it’s almost certain that they did buy heroin and are simply suffering some all too normal and horrific consequences.

* Just to make sure, I checked with the Illinois Department of Public Health today and asked if the state has any confirmed Krokodil cases “No,” was the answer.

Even so, a resolution was introduced last month about the drug scare…

Urges the Drug Enforcement Administration to recognize the use of desomorphine or “krokodil” as an immediate threat and to investigate cases of the drug in Illinois to prevent its spread and to safeguard the wellbeing of Illinois residents.

If the past is prologue, I’m assuming we’ll see penalty enhancement bills introduced soon as well. All over something that doesn’t exist and probably won’t because of simple economics.