Kush is a highly addictive drug that first appeared in Sierra Leone about six years ago and has since become very popular. Authorities say they do not have an official death toll, but according to local experts, “hundreds of young men” in the capital Freetown must have died of organ failure due to drug use in the past few months alone.
The psychoactive kush is also putting pressure on the mental health care system in Sierra Leone: at the Sierra Leone Psychiatric Hospital, the only psychiatric hospital in the country, the number of admissions related to kush use increased by 4,000 percent between 2020 and 2023. As many as 63 percent of all current patients in the hospital are or were addicted to the drug.
“It takes you to another world, where you no longer know yourself”
Groups of mainly young, unemployed men with swollen limbs – a symptom of kush use – on street corners are therefore not a rare sight in Sierra Leone. “I can’t escape it,” says an addict with a wrap around his ankle at the BBC. “I don’t want to do this, but I can’t resist. Because I love it.” A dose costs barely 20 to 25 euro cents. “It takes you to another world, where you no longer know yourself,” another describes the high.
“I wanted to be a musician, but the drugs turned me into a zombie,” says Abu Bakhar (25) on Channel 4. “The drugs made me not concentrate on my studies. I don’t write anymore because of the drugs. Drugs make me unable to concentrate.” The man lives together with thousands of other homeless drug addicts in a dump in a suburb of Freetown.
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Human bones
Kush consists of a mix of various toxic chemicals such as disinfectant, various herbs and plants such as cannabis, and ground up human bones. They contain sulphur, which increases the effect of the drug. The enormous demand for kush therefore has a grim side effect: the large cemeteries in Freetown are the scene of large-scale grave robberies.
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Emergency
Given the scale of the epidemic and the “escalating number of fatalities”, President Julius Maada Bio declared a national emergency on Thursday evening, in a speech broadcast live on television. “Our country is currently facing an existential threat from the devastating impact of drug abuse, especially the devastating Kush,” it said.
That is why a national drug agency is being established, which “will mainly focus on combating the Kush epidemic.” “Law enforcement agencies must dismantle the production chain through investigations, arrests and prosecutions,” Bio said. The country’s cemeteries are also being given stricter security to discourage grave robbers.
Investments are also being made in drug rehabilitation centers in each province, which Bio says should be “adequately staffed with trained professionals to provide care and support for drug addicts.” Currently, the country only has one drug rehabilitation center: a camp hastily set up earlier this year in a former army training center, with barely 100 beds. Due to a lack of facilities, it has been described by experts as “more like a prison than a drug rehabilitation centre”.
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