Kush, a synthetic cannabinoid, is spreading quickly for the promise of a stress-relieving high. But what's the impact on users — and Sierra Leonean society? And how are the authorities responding?
26-year-old Zainab Sankoh in a shack at the Kingtom dump site in Freetown, Sierra Leone. A self-described"hustler," Sankoh used to send money home to support her family and her young daughter in a village in the south of the country. Now, she spends almost all her money on kush."My life is miserable" said Sankoh."This is not the Zainab I used to be."26-year-old Zainab Sankoh in a shack at the Kingtom dump site in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
"Before, if we had money we'd spend it on food or clothes," he says."Now we just buy kush. It makes you want to cry, but it's not easy to stop." "It's a crisis, and we won't shy away from saying so," says Kargbo."I was born and raised in Freetown and I've never seen anything like this before. It's overwhelming."
Buildings on a hillside in the Susan's Bay neighborhood of central Freetown, Sierra Leone. Many residents have turned to kush as a cheap and accessible escape from lives of grinding poverty.Buildings on a hillside in the Susan's Bay neighborhood of central Freetown, Sierra Leone. Many residents have turned to kush as a cheap and accessible escape from lives of grinding poverty.Sierra Leone also has extremely limited capacity for drug treatment and rehabilitation. The U.S.
Part of what makes kush so dangerous is that users can never be certain what's in it. Local media have reported on widespread rumors that some producers add ground-up human bones, though no direct evidence of it has emerged. A soldier searches inside the roof cavity of the home of a suspected kush dealer in Waterloo, Sierra Leone. The officers say they discovered large quantities of kush in the house and made several arrests.A soldier searches inside the roof cavity of the home of a suspected kush dealer in Waterloo, Sierra Leone. The officers say they discovered large quantities of kush in the house and made several arrests.As they arrived at the site, young men began to flee in all directions.
Neither is it only the poor who are drawn to the appeal of kush. Videos on social media show civil servants and policemen using the drug. Some who use, like 30-year-old Ahmed Kang, even come from the country's wealthy elite. Kang was born in a Freetown suburb but spent most of his childhood in Columbus, Ohio, where his family lived a comfortable life.
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