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Sierra Leone declares emergency over drug kush - made from human bones
Psychoactive drug kush has prompted a wave of deaths, mental health issues and the digging up of graves.
www.bbc.com
Sierra Leone declares emergency over drug kush - made from human bones
Psychoactive drug kush has prompted a wave of deaths, mental health issues and the digging up of graves.
www.bbc.com
Sierra Leone declares emergency over drug kush - made from human bones
By Umaru Fofana, BBC News, Freetown
Sixty-three percent of patients at Sierra Leone Psychiatric Hospital have been admitted for kush-related issues
Sierra Leone's president has declared a national emergency over rampant drug abuse.
Kush, a psychoactive blend of addictive substances, has been prevalent in the country for years.
President Julius Maada Bio called the drug a "death trap" and said it posed an "existential crisis".
One of the drug's many ingredients is human bones - security has been tightened in cemeteries to stop addicts digging up skeletons from graves.
Groups of mostly young men sitting on street corners with limbs swollen by kush abuse is a common sight in Sierra Leone.
With a bandage around his ankle, one recovering addict told the BBC the drug has a tight grip on him.
"I don't like doing this, but I cannot leave it because I enjoy it," he said.
There is no official death toll, but one doctor told the BBC that "in recent months" hundreds of young men had died from organ failure caused by kush in the capital, Freetown.
The psychoactive substance also takes a toll on mental health - the Sierra Leone Psychiatric Hospital, the country's only institution of its kind, says between 2020 and 2023, admissions linked to kush surged by almost 4,000% to reach 1,865.
And the spike in kush use has seen Freetown's main cemeteries request police security to protect themselves from young men digging up skeletons - ground-up human bone is one of the many ingredients used to make kush, although it is not clear why.
In a nationwide broadcast on Thursday night, President Bio said: "Our country is currently faced with an existential threat due to the ravaging impact of drugs and substance abuse, particularly the devastating synthetic drug kush."
He added that there had been "escalating fatalities" among kush users.
The president also directed officials to set up a National Task Force on Drugs and Substance Abuse, which will primarily focus on "combatting the kush crisis".
He said centres will be set up in every district and "adequately staffed by trained professionals to offer care and support to people with drug addiction".
At present, Freetown is home to the country's only functioning drug rehabilitation centre. The 100-bed facility was hurriedly set up in an army training centre earlier this year.
Experts have described it as "more of a holding centre than a rehab" because of its lack of adequate facilities.
As well as addressing treatment, the president said law enforcement agencies should "dismantle the drug supply chain through investigations, arrests, and prosecutions".
Deputy Mayor of Freetown Kweku Lisk told the BBC that his office had requested security from the police in order to tackle gravediggers.
At the moment, there is a night-time police deployment at the Kissy Road cemetery, a large unfenced site in an eastern suburb.
Mr Bio's administration has been criticised by people who say it lacks the strategy and drive to respond to kush abuse.
"Such is the vacuum left by the lack of adequate response that communities have often had to take the law into their own hands and have responded to the crisis sometimes in a disjointed and crude manner", said a foreign diplomat in Sierra Leone.
This sentiment has been echoed by callers on some local radio talk shows and on social media.
Dr Abdul Jalloh, head of the Sierra Leone Psychiatric Hospital, said Mr Bio's emergency declaration is "the right step" and will be "crucial in addressing drug use".
"It signifies the prioritisation of resources, attention and intervention to combat this growing epidemic," he said.
Some 63% of the hospital's current patients were admitted with kush-related problems.
Marie, a mother who lost her 21-year-old son to kush, said: "There is a lot the authorities must do beyond the president's address last night to combat this scourge."
Kush: what is this dangerous new west African drug that supposedly contains human bones?
Kush: what is this dangerous new west African drug that supposedly contains human bones?
A new polydrug is destroying lives in west Africa.
theconversation.com
A new drug called kush is wreaking havoc in west Africa, particularly in Sierra Leone where it is estimated to kill around a dozen people each week and hospitalise thousands.
The drug, taken mostly by men aged 18 to 25, causes people to fall asleep while walking, to fall over, to bang their heads against hard surfaces and to walk into moving traffic.
Kush should not be confused with the drug of the same name found in the US, which is a mixture of “an ever-changing host of chemicals” sprayed on plant matter and smoked. Kush in Sierra Leone is quite different; it is a mixture of cannabis, fentanyl, tramadol, formaldehyde and – according to some – ground down humans bones.
It is mixed by local criminal gangs, but the constituent drugs have international sources, facilitated no doubt by the internet and digital communications.
While cannabis is widely grown in Sierra Leone, the fentanyl is thought to originate in clandestine laboratories in China where the drug is manufactured illegally and shipped to west Africa. Tramadol has a similar source, namely illegal laboratories across Asia. Formaldehyde, which can cause hallucinations, is also reported in this mixture.
As for ground human bones, there is no definitive answer about whether or not they occur in the drug, where such bones would come from, or why they might be incorporated into the drug. Some people say that grave robbers provide the bones, but there is no direct evidence of this.
But why would bones be incorporated into the drug? Some suggest that the sulphur content of the bones causes a high. Another reason might be the drug content of the bones themselves, if the deceased was a fentanyl or tramadol user.
However, both are unlikely. Sulphur levels in bones are not high. Smoking sulphur would result in highly toxic sulphur dioxide being produced and inhaled. Any drug content in bones is orders of magnitude less than that required to cause a physiological effect.
Where is the drug found?
The drug is reported in both Guinea and Liberia, which share porous land borders with Sierra Leone, making drug trafficking easy.Kush costs around five leones (20 UK pence) per joint, which may be used by two or three people, with up to 40 joints being consumed in a day. This represents a massive spend on drugs and illustrates the addictive nature of the mixture, in a country where the annual income per capita is around £500.
The effects of the drug vary and depend on the user and the drug content. Cannabis causes a wide variety of effects, which include euphoria, relaxation and an altered state of consciousness.
Fentanyl, an extremely potent opioid, produces euphoria and confusion and causes sleepiness among a wide range of other side-effects. Similarly, tramadol, which is also an opioid but less potent than fentanyl (100mg tramadol has the same effect as 10mg morphine) results in users becoming sleepy and “spaced out” – disconnected from things happening around them.
Kush can contain tramadol, an opioid. Saowanee K/Shutterstock
The danger of the drug is twofold: the risk of self-injury to the drug taker and the highly addictive nature of the drug itself. A further problem is the need to finance the next dose, often achieved through prostitution or criminal activity.
Joining the ranks of existing polydrugs
Kush is another example of polydrug mixtures of which forensic scientists are becoming increasingly aware. Another tobacco and cannabis-based drug, nyaope, otherwise known as whoonga, is found in South Africa. This time the tobacco and cannabis are mixed with heroin and antiretroviral drugs used to treat Aids, some of which are hallucinogenic.A further polydrug, “white pipe”, a mixture of methaqualone (Mandrax), cannabis and tobacco, is smoked in southern Africa. These drugs are inexpensive and provide an escape from unemployment, the drudgery of poverty, sexual and physical abuse, and the effect, in some cases, especially in west Africa, from having been a child soldier. So what can be done about these drugs?
The effectiveness of legislation alone is questionable, and many of those who attend the very limited rehabilitation centres return to drug use. Perhaps what is required is an integrated forensic healthcare system where legislative control is backed up by properly resourced rehabilitation centres coupled with a public health and employment programme. What changes are made in response to this epidemic remains to be seen.
