‘Kush’, the new drug that devastates the youth of Sierra Leone

It has become a common image in the capital of Sierra Leone: young people walking like zombies, lying on dirty streets, shaking their heads frantically, high on a new drug synthetic – the ‘kush’ – so widely consumed that the Government declared a ‘national emergency’ to stop its use.

“It’s a bad situation. People don’t feel comfortable around me. Insults rain down on me every day.”Solomon Clarke, 27, who admitted to being addicted to this drug, tells EFE.

In it ‘kush’, A combination of several highly addictive chemicals – including fentanyl – with effects similar to those of cannabis, this young man found help to better endure life on the streets of Freetown.

He is an orphan and sleeps outdoors in the Krootown street market, in the west of the city.

“I started taking ‘kush’ to relieve my stress. I have no one. No one can help me, so I need to have courage to survive on the street. When I take ‘kush’, I feel like I have it all. It’s like my family is close to me again. My dreams come true”, explains this young man.

However, Clarke regrets having started using this drug. “Now, no human being wants to sit next to me. People are moving away from me. “I didn’t know ‘kush’ would affect me like that,” confess.

Many of Clarke’s friends have died, probably from the use of this drug. There are no official death tolls, but officials at the Freetown public morgue claim to have counted more than thirty bodies of unidentified young people in recent months.

They were buried in a mass grave, which sparked protests from some citizens.

“It’s enough!”

The director of hospital care at the Sierra Leone University Psychiatric Hospital, Dr. Abdul Jalloh, explains to EFE that he has 147 patients in his facilities, most of them addicted to ‘kush’ or other narcotics.

Workers at the center try to detoxify them and provide them with psychotherapy, as well as teach them new skills so they can rebuild their lives, but Jalloh regrets the lack of resources.

“We have limited manpower, limited psychotropic medications, limited funding, patient abandonment by family members, limited medical supplies…”recognize.

Faced with this scenario, the country’s president, Julius Maada Bio, declared a ‘national emergency’ on April 4.

“It’s enough! “This deadly kush, which knows no boundaries of class, ethnicity, gender or religion, is taking a devastating toll on our communities, tearing apart families and depriving us of future leaders,”-Bio exclaimed that night in a televised speech to the nation.

The “alarming mortality rate of our youth due to the addictive use of kush is no longer acceptable,” the president said.

The first step of the Bio Government has been the creation of a National Task Force on Drugs and Substance Abuse that, through school programs and community and media campaigns, seeks to “empower” young people.with the knowledge and skills they need to make healthy decisions and resist the temptation of drugs.”.

Civil society activist and executive director of the Mental Watch Advocacy Network organization, Hassan Ibrahim Koroma, has welcomed the measure of the Sierra Leonean Executive.

“Government intervention is necessary in this ‘kush’ epidemic”Koroma assures EFE.

However, he also regrets the authorities’ delay in acting and blames the Government for having done little to address problems such as unemployment, one of the factors that has pushed many young people to consume this drug.

With about 8.5 million inhabitants, Sierra Leone is a small but densely populated country, which from 1991 to 2001 experienced a devastating civil war, which left more than 50,000 dead.

It also endured a catastrophic Ebola epidemic in 2014, which caused some 4,000 deaths in the country.

According to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), around 57% of Sierra Leoneans have difficulty eating adequately.

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