Sierra Leone's fight against Kush

SINGING sweetly as she packed her bag to leave the rehab centre, Mariama Turay vowed never again to smoke kush, the fearsome drug that wrecked her marriage - and countless lives in Sierra Leone.

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“This drug is killing us slowly,” sighed the gentle-mannered 29-year-old, elegantly made up with shiny rings in her ears and nose.

“I’m promising myself that I am not going there anymore.” After seven weeks of therapeutic rehab under military guard with doctors and social workers, she is ready to go home to her parents.

An hour's drive from the state-run centre where she was treated, desperate addicts who could not obtain therapeutic care lie chained to the floor for months in an informal detox house.

“The parents have nowhere to take their children,” said Hassan Kamara, the traditional healer who runs it.

“It’s impossible to control their children. The suffering is too much.”

Sierra Leone's President Julius Maada Bio in April 2024 declared a state of emergency due to a spike in deaths caused by kush, a synthetic drug containing powerful opioids and sometimes synthetic versions of cannabis-derived substances. Tests on kush in Sierra Leone found nitazenes, a synthetic opioid comparable to fentanyl, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime. Cheap and highly addictive, kush can drive users psychotic, sparking hallucinations and damaging vital organs.