Careful with the booger sugar, kids—it could take your skin off. No, really. A large amount of the cocaine in the States is cut with the livestock dewormer levamisole, and now a new paper in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology says that same drug is starting to take the skin off of some patients in Los Angeles and New York.
According to the DEA, in 2010 up to 70 percent of the cocaine in the country could have been cut with levamisole—which adds an additional kick to the drug—and that is starting to be an issue. In the study researchers found six "remarkably similar patients seen over just the past few months" whose skin showed "very profound areas of necrosis—dying skin—usually located on scalp, ears, face and elsewhere on the body," according to Dr. Gail Mercurio of the University of Rochester Medical Center. "It's very alarming."
Beyond those six examples, however, the authors were able to point to more than a dozen additional similar cases, leading the paper's authors to worry that "these cases of skin reactions and illnesses linked to contaminated cocaine are just the tip of the iceberg in a looming public health problem posed by levamisole."
The necrosis caused by the drug can be fixed with steroids and blood thinners, but quitting the nose candy or changing dealers, helps too. "In one of the more interesting ones, the patient used cocaine again and developed the same skin reaction again," Dr. Noah Craft, another co-author, told KTLA. "He then switched drug dealers, and the problem cleared up."
Before you freak out too much about how your Bolivian Marching Powder is going to turn you into the Phantom, it could be worse! Americans could be getting hooked on Krokodil, a drug currently reaching epidemic levels in Russia, which can leave its users flesh rotting off their bones (NSFW).
