If drugs remain illegal - this is what you get (WARNING: Extremely graphic pic)

[lapislzi]

171. You could argue (I won't) that krokodil is the evil stepchild of a legal drug.

You can't apply U.S.-centric drug and prison theories to Russia. It's a very different place, although what you could argue is that the level of hopelessness and desperation of poor, rural, un- or underemployed youth is comparable.

How desperate, how miserable, how fucked up do you have to be to believe that shooting up with poison is better than the life you have?

There are many other industrialized nations where codeine is available over the counter. Krokodil hasn't made significant inroads into many of them, although it's creeping into Europe by degrees. I would argue that the presence of a social safety net in many European countries would make this type of drug abuse less attractive, and easier to treat. I don't have statistics to back up my hunch, though.

In Russia, there's nowhere even to warehouse the drug criminals. They're left to slow suicide, or, if they're lucky, they find their way to rehab facilities operated almost exclusively by fundamentalist churches.