Sierra Leone is a desperately poor country in West Africa that once experienced a bloody civil war in which insurgents would systematically chop off civilians’ limbs to spread terror.
Now, it is being afflicted by a drug called kush. More and more young people are taking the drug.
On the edge of a filthy dump in the capital Freetown, Mohamed, a 25-year-old garbage picker, smoked a joint laced with kush.
For about an hour, he said, he would get “high,” sleep, and wake up. Then, a short time later, he would do it all over again.
“We smoke it the whole day,” he said.
“I spend a lot of money on it every day — around 200 leones,” or around $10: a small fortune in a country with average per capita income of under $500 a year.
Sierra Leone is the fourth poorest country on Earth.
Mohamed’s companions also are addicted to kush. They are crammed into a shack shrouded in kush smoke, in the heart of a slum where children play among pigs and garbage.
The synthetically made drug was invented half a dozen years ago, although its exact composition is uncertain.
Manufactured and distributed by criminal gangs, “the drug is an amalgamation of various chemicals and plants,” including some “that mimic the natural (cannabinoid) THC found in cannabis,” said Abdul Sheku Kargbo, head of Sierra Leon’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency.
The active ingredient’s concentration can be “exponentially increased,” ratcheting up potency, he states.
“Young people are dying,” said Ibrahim Hassan Koroma, founder of Sierra Leone’s Mental Watch Advocacy Network.
Kush users seem to be everywhere in Freetown, from the slums to the business district, with users sitting slumped with their heads lolling and sometimes sleeping standing up.
22-year-old Kadiatu is among those who are hooked on the drug. “Sometimes when I wake up from sleep without smoking, my body and joints ache,” she said.
“After I smoke two, three (joints), I feel okay, I feel alright, my meditation changes, my mood becomes cool. After smoking I eat a lot,” she said.
To pay for her hits, she works as a prostitute. It is apparently a dangerous line of work. She has scars from knife attacks.
