cement arm

cement arm (plural cement arms)

1. (slang) A person's arm that has scarred and hardened from the repeated injection of recreational drugs.
   • 1932, Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, page 8:

     […] this use of codeine causing, in underworld parlance, a “cement arm”, hard lumps forming at the point of injection.

   • 1953, Leroy Street (pseudonym), I was a Drug Addict (page 153)

     As the “cement arms” became more common, the earlier patients began to fall away. Some of them thought that the iron in the mixture was responsible, and asked Dr. Lilliendahl to leave it out of their prescriptions. But he never did.