Kush: The Synthetic Drug Turning West Africa's Youth Into 'Zombies'

In the alleys of Freetown, young men slump against walls, drift off mid-sentence, or wander into oncoming traffic in a drug-induced stupor. Across the border in Monrovia, families keep chained rooms to restrain relatives during withdrawal. This is the visible face of kush a cheap, brutally addictive synthetic drug that has, since 2022, likely killed thousands of people across West Africa's Mano River Basin and is now pushing further into the wider sub-region.

What Kush Is Made Of
Kush first surfaced in Sierra Leone in 2022 and has since spread to Liberia, Guinea, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and Ghana. Unlike cannabis-based street drugs of the past, laboratory testing commissioned by Sierra Leone's own drug regulator carried out by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) in partnership with the Clingendael Institute found that the drug is chemically engineered, not organic.

Field testing found that 87 percent of kush samples in Sierra Leone contained nitazenes, a class of synthetic opioid that can be up to 25 times more potent than fentanyl. The remainder of the mixture typically includes synthetic cannabinoids, and street-level batches have been found cut with substances such as Tramadol, acetone, paint and formaldehyde.

Persistent community claims that vendors grind human bones into the mixture have circulated widely, though a Gambian government taskforce has said there is no scientific evidence to support this.

Investigators traced the precursor chemicals to a transnational supply chain: raw materials ordered online from suppliers in China, and shipped or posted through the Netherlands and, likely, the United Kingdom, before being finished into kush in makeshift labs in Freetown. Researchers at Clingendael, including Dr Kars de Bruijne, who heads the institute's West Africa and Sahel programme, have argued that all three source countries bear a share of responsibility for the harm the drug is causing.

A Public Health Emergency
The physical toll of kush is severe. Users, often called "zombies" for their glassy-eyed, sedated gait, have been documented falling asleep while standing, banging their heads against walls, or collapsing into traffic. Reported effects include swollen limbs, organ failure, chronic joint and neck pain, and acute mental health crises. Overdose deaths tied to nitazene poisoning have overwhelmed mortuary systems in the worst-affected areas, with reports of emergency group cremations and bodies left uncollected.

By April 2024, the scale of the crisis was severe enough that the presidents of both Sierra Leone and Liberia took the rare step of declaring national public health emergencies over drug use. Sierra Leone's President Julius Maada Bio described kush as "an existential threat" to the country. Hospitals in Freetown have reported a more than twentyfold increase in kush-related admissions in just two years, and rehabilitation centres many run by community groups and religious charities such as Caritas remain severely under-resourced relative to demand.

A Regional Threat
Analysts warn that kush's spread is not contained to its countries of origin. A joint GI-TOC and Clingendael assessment cautioned that the region may be witnessing "just the beginning of a larger looming" synthetic drugs crisis, as decentralized trafficking networks involving importers, local "lock" intermediaries and distributors continue to expand their reach. The Institute for Security Studies has separately urged Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to coordinate a joint Mano River Basin response, warning that the crisis threatens to undermine the fragile post-conflict stability those countries worked for decades to rebuild after civil war and the 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic.

Liberia's Drug Enforcement Agency has recorded seizures running into tens of thousands of kilograms of kush cannabis, though officials and civil society figures in Monrovia say enforcement alone has done little to slow the drug's spread without parallel investment in treatment and youth livelihoods.

The Response So Far
Governments in the sub-region have launched public awareness campaigns including Sierra Leone's anti-kush drive and Liberia's "Say No to Kush" initiative alongside limited detoxification and rehabilitation services. Researchers, however, argue that the response so far falls well short of what the crisis demands. The GI-TOC-Clingendael report calls for a three-pronged international strategy: building an evidence base through better monitoring and cross-border information-sharing; disrupting the supply chain by tightening scrutiny of precursor chemical exports from China, the Netherlands and the UK; and mitigating harm by expanding access to opioid overdose reversal medication and treatment as an alternative to incarceration for users.

For now, the human cost continues to mount in a sub-region already contending with poverty, unemployment and the long aftershocks of conflict conditions that researchers say make young people especially vulnerable to a drug that offers a brief escape at a catastrophic price.

Mustapha Bature Sallama.
Medical/ Science Communicator,
Private Investigator, Criminal investigation and Intelligence Analysis.

International Conflict Management and Peace Building.USIP

mustysallama@gmail.com
+233-555-275-880
References
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/kush-in-sierra-leone/

Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (announcement) https://globalinitiative.net/announcements/new-report-on-kush-highlights-west-africas-growing-synthetic-drugs-challenge/

Clingendael Institute https://www.clingendael.org/publication/kush-sierra-leone-west-africas-growing-synthetic-drugs-challenge-and-europes-and-chinas

The Africa Report https://www.theafricareport.com/378010/kush-the-drug-devastating-west-africa-now-made-in-sierra-leone/

ADF Magazine https://adf-magazine.com/2025/03/kush-composed-of-powerful-synthetic-opioids-ravages-west-africa/

Associated Press (via Yahoo News) https://www.yahoo.com/news/main-ingredients-sierra-leones-kush-164346823.html

Institute for Security Studies (via AllAfrica) https://allafrica.com/stories/202409110001.html

Business Insider (via AOL) https://www.aol.com/global-synthetic-drugs-crisis-hit-131142929.html

AllAfrica news roundup https://allafrica.com/view/group/main/main/id/00093244.html

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