“It’s like it has something demonic in it. They see their friends and people around them dying, and yet they still take it,” a drug addict in Sierra Leone said, as the country grapples with the effects of a drug that is turning youths into “zombies”.
The West African country has declared a national emergency after addiction to a drug, kush, made from human bones, has led thousands of youths to dig up skeletons from graves to get intoxicated.
Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio called it an “existential threat”, with the BBC quoting a doctor as saying that hundreds of young men had died from organ failure caused by the drug in recent months.
SIERRA LEONE GRAPPLES WITH ‘ZOMBIE’ DRUG MENACE: 10 POINTS
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The menace has escalated to a point that the Sierra Leone government has deployed police officers in large numbers to guard cemeteries to stop people from digging up skeletons. A task force has also been constituted for prevention and social services support.
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Visuals on social media showed groups of mostly young men, almost incapacitated, sitting on streets with swollen limbs due to kush abuse.
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The drug causes people to fall asleep while walking, bang their heads, and to walk into moving traffic. Users have complained of pounding sensation in the head and pain in the neck and joints.
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Such is the crisis that young men have started stealing from homes to buy drugs. “I sold my clothes and books to satisfy my addiction. I started stealing house-hold items, phones, pots and dishes to buy drugs,” an addict told The Telegraph.
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Around 63% of the hospitals in Sierra Leone have been swamped with young addicts, the BBC reported. However, kush abuse in nothing new. Between 2020 and 2023, admissions linked to kush abuse have surged by almost 4,000%.
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The drug is mainly made up of ground-up human bone, which is then mixed with a chemical called Fentanyl, cannabis, and disinfectants. As per a kush addict, the drug provides a “hypnotic high” that takes users out of reality for several hours, a New York Post report said.
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The drug is extremely cheap. A single joint can cost 5 leones (around Rs 19). A Daily Mail report said young people were spending as much as £8 (Rs 840) per day on the drug.
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Experts blamed the crisis on the very high unemployment rate in the country. Youth unemployment stands at 60%, one of the highest in West Africa, as per a report in The Guardian.
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The authorities have launched a nationwide crackdown on dealers and users of the drug in an exercise called ‘Operation Zero Tolerance’.
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The menace is now spreading across the border as well. Guinea and Liberia, which border Sierra Leone, have also reported an increase in kush consumption. Guinea has laready reported 10 deaths.
