Overdose deaths by users of the synthetic drug “kush” are on the rise in West Africa, where new drug consumption and production markets are surging. Made with synthetic opioids, it is one of the most powerful and dangerous drugs on the market.
Sometimes known as “the zombie drug,” its users can fall asleep while walking, sometimes into traffic. They can bang their heads against walls and fall from buildings. Users often complain of pounding pain in their head, neck and joints. It can cause limbs to swell, organs to fail and trigger severe mental health issues.
A new report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) and the Clingendael Institute said more young people are likely to be affected by the drug in the growing region and that kush use may be “just the beginning of a larger looming drugs problem in West Africa.”
Many kush users are young men between 18 and 25.
“Brilliant students end up on my slab,” a senior medical examiner in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, said in the report. “Kush kills and deaths are on the increase.”
The problem is particularly acute in Sierra Leone, but kush use has steadily spread to The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and Senegal. Due primarily to the popularity of kush, Liberia and Sierra Leone declared national emergencies over drug use last year.
“Government intervention is critical in supporting the rehabilitation and integration of addicts to become useful citizens in society,” Emmanuel Degleh, a journalist based in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, told The Telegraph.
The drug is often made with potent synthetic opioids called nitazenes, some of which are 25 times stronger than fentanyl, the GI-TOC-Clingendael report said. Since 2022, it has likely killed thousands of people in West Africa.
The report found that 87% of field-tested kush samples in Sierra Leone last year contained nitazenes; the sample study was requested by Sierra Leone’s government.
“We believe kush is the first case of nitazenes penetrating West Africa’s drug markets,” wrote the report’s authors, Lucia Bird Ruiz Benitez de Lugo and Dr. Kars de Bruijne. “This reflects global trends, which show nitazenes and associated fatalities surging globally since late 2022.”
Rumors have swirled that kush often contains fentanyl, phencyclidine (PCP), methamphetamine and tramadol, but these drugs were not found in the Sierra Leonean study. It was also commonly believed that Sierra Leonean kush was made with human bones, but this was denied by kush manufacturers interviewed for the report.
Kush is popular due to its potency and low price, especially in areas with high levels of unemployed young people. A single joint can cost just 5 leones (far less than 1 cent) and the effects can last for several hours. The nitazenes and synthetic cannabinoids in kush are highly addictive, fueling greater usage.
“It makes me feel happy for a moment,” Amara, a young man in Sierra Leone, told The Telegraph. “Enough to forget my worries and societal problems.”
While kush is linked to international synthetic drug markets, including those in China, it is also manufactured locally and distributed by criminal gangs. Reports of kush use and distribution in Sierra Leone began as early as 2016, when the drug was less potent than newer strains.
Around 2020-2021, two people gained control of a kush distribution group operating around Freetown and established a network of mid-level distributors and dealers. The pair had family ties to some politicians, giving them a degree of protection that allowed their operations to grow, the GI-TOC-Clingendael report said.
The group splintered amid friction between its mid-level actors. This increased the number of local players, gradually boosting local production and consumption. By 2022, more deaths and serious health effects linked to kush were reported. In Freetown, drug users and other residents reported people dying on the street.
According to the BBC, kush-related admissions to the Sierra Leone Psychiatric Teaching Hospital, the country’s only mental hospital, surged by almost 4,000% between 2020 and 2023.
The drug’s popularity has not diminished.
“The difficulty of sustainably disrupting or shrinking established kush markets underscores the importance of early-warning systems and fast action by governments to prevent, or at least mitigate, entrenchment of the kush market in the first place,” the report said. “It also means harm-reduction approaches are a pivotal building block in a future response.”
Among other actions, the researchers recommended that West African nations improve information-sharing on synthetic drug compounds; increase regional capacities to identify, classify, seize and control synthetic substances; and enhance scrutiny at points of entry, especially in Sierra Leone.
