**The fight against synthetic drugs in Sierra Leone: a desperate fight to save the youth**
In the heart of the waste-filled streets of Sierra Leone, a devastating scourge rages: cheap synthetic drugs. Alleys littered with trash welcome young men and adolescents plunged into addiction. Health services are severely limited. To deal with this growing crisis, a desperate community set up a treatment center, run by volunteers. However, strict measures are sometimes necessary, illustrating the scale of the challenge.
The initiative began in the Mumbai suburb of Freetown about a year ago when a group of people tried to help a colleague’s younger brother wean himself off the drug called kush. After unsuccessful attempts at persuasion and threats, they locked him in his room for two months. This method worked. He was able to find his way back to university and thank those who freed him.
“The only time I left the room was to go to the bathroom,” recalls Christian Johnson, 21. His motivation to wean himself off drugs was fueled by thoughts of his family, fear of failure, and abandonment by many of his friends.
Volunteers then expanded their efforts by taking over an abandoned building. They intercept people at the request of their families and sometimes tie them up to prevent them from escaping, recalling a practice previously used by the West African country’s only psychiatric hospital. Conditions are harsh, with little comfort against the concrete walls and floor, and little activity to combat the urges.
So far, the Mumbai community has treated between 70 and 80 people, volunteers said. One showed the chains used in extreme cases, although no one was tied up at the time. The youngest detainee was a 13-year-old boy sent by his father.
“I was very angry and wanted nothing to do with him,” said the father, Gibrilla Bangura, a university professor. “I am very grateful to these men and women for their role in helping my son.”
Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio declared war on kush this year, calling it an epidemic and national threat. He established a drug and substance abuse force, promising to lead a government approach focused on prevention and treatment, involving law enforcement and community engagement.
“We are witnessing the destructive consequences of kush on the very foundations of our country, our young people,” Bio said in April.
Few people know what they’re consuming with kush, a cannabis derivative mixed with synthetic drugs like fentanyl and tramadol, as well as chemicals like formalin. In some communities, civil society workers say people have exhumed graves to remove bones to mix with drugs to obtain chemicals used in embalming.
The director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Sierra Leone, Daphne Moffett, highlighted a major challenge in responding to this crisis: the changing composition of the drug. “Before we can put appropriate interventions in place, we need to know what materials make up kush,” she said in an email.
This drug leaves individuals lethargic, hopeless and sick. Although the government does not release official figures on kush-related deaths or hospital admissions, Ansu Konneh, director of mental health at the Ministry of Social Welfare, indicated a marked increase in people addicted to kush presenting at Sierra Leone’s only psychiatric hospital since 2022.
Konneh runs the country’s first public drug treatment center, which opened in Freetown in February. He said kush had an impact on Sierra Leone like no other drug.
“It causes young people to drop out of college and has detrimental effects on their health. We can see that they have swollen feet, multi-organ failure, they are involved in criminal acts,” he said. -he explains. “This is a very serious situation. It leads to family disintegration, problems in communities, and deaths every day.”
Prince Bull-Luseni, director of the West African Drug Policy Network, a group that aims to promote policy reforms, said Sierra Leone was the worst-affected country in the region. “Every community in Sierra Leone, not just Freetown, is affected by kush and it’s tearing them apart,” he told the AP, adding that with no treatment or rehabilitation for most users, “there is no way to deal with this”.
Social Linkages For Youth Development And Child Link (SLYDCL), a non-profit organization that fights drug use, relies on former users to educate young people about the consequences of this drug. The organization has advocated for years with the government to allocate more resources to the fight against addiction.
“Overcoming addiction wasn’t easy. It was one of the hardest parts of my life,” said Ephraim Macaulay, a peer educator who discovered kush in college and paid less of one dollar for a day’s supply. “It’s like you’re trying to get out of the water when there’s water all around you.”
He motivated himself by comparing himself to his friends and family. They were clean. He smelled bad. Gradually, he stopped using drugs. Now, he sometimes feels on the verge of tears when talking to his peers, remembering what his life could have been like if he hadn’t overcome addiction.
Habib Kamara, executive director of SLYDCL, highlighted the exponential growth in the availability of kush since suppliers began manufacturing it locally.