Who doesn’t want to be a zombie that smokes?
Although Japan doesn’t tend to have quite as prolific a drug culture as other countries, one does exist, and the newest part of it to make headlines has been “zombie cigarettes” (literally “zombie tobacco” in Japanese, but “tobacco” is often used to refer to cigarettes in the language).
That’s the name the Japanese media and authorities tend to use for it, and other names include “zombie juice,” “kpods,” “space oil,” and “laughing gas,” but the true name of the key substance is etomidate. This is an extremely fast-acting anesthetic that can knock patients out in a matter of seconds and is usually used in ER settings as a precursor for regular anesthetics, because etomidate is also very short-lasting, with patients waking back up in a matter of minutes.
