By OLIVER PRICE and LETTICE BROMOVSKY – The Daily Mail
Armed police are standing guard outside cemeteries in Sierra Leone to stop drug addicts stealing human bones that they grind up to use in a psychoactive ‘zombie’ drug that is sweeping the country.
The president of the West African nation, Julius Maada Bio, yesterday declared a national emergency over an epidemic of the abuse of ‘kush‘ – a highly addictive drug cocktail made up of marijuana, fentanyl, tramadol and formaldehyde.
It has also been claimed that a key ingredient is ground-up human bones, which some suggest is enhances the high due to the trace amounts of sulphur.
The sharp spike in abuse of kush – which is rolled in paper and smoked as a joint – has now forced police officers to guard cemeteries in the capital of Freetown, to stop young men from digging up skeletons to get high.
Kush has caused hundreds of deaths and psychiatrically damaged scores of users since it first appeared in Sierra Leone around four years ago, according to the government, although no official figures exist on the exact number.
Armed police are standing guard outside cemeteries in Sierra Leone to stop drug addicts stealing human bones that they grind up to use in a new psychoactive ‘zombie’ drug
Pictured: A woman sleeping while sat down in a Kush drug den in Freetown, in July 2023
The new ‘zombie’ drug containing human bones is sweeping through Sierra Leone, killing two users each week – and leading dealers to rob graves to keep up with demand
The president of the West African nation, Julius Maada Bio (pictured in 2018), yesterday declared a national emergency over an epidemic of the abuse of ‘kush’
In a nationwide broadcast yesterday, President Bio said: ‘Our country is currently faced with an existential threat due to the ravaging impact of drugs and substance abuse, particularly the devastating synthetic drug kush.’
lthough there is no official death toll linked to kush abuse, one doctor from Freetown, told the BBC that ‘in recent months’ hundreds of young men had died from organ failure caused by the drug.
An official from Freetown Municipal Council told West Africa Democracy Radio that armed police were being deployed to protect cemeteries in the Sierra Leonean capital after graverobbers harvested bones from several corpses over night.
Sierra Leone Ministry of Health chief, Harold Thomas, told the radio station: ‘They are also even using bones of dead people to actually make these compounds so they can smoke. It’s a menace to society.’
In the past few weeks, police have supercharged efforts to combat graverobbing. Detective Ahmed Sheku Turay said that officers have targeted graveyards in Freetown’s Racecourse Cemetery where people known as ‘Kush Boys’ have been found tampering with graves, local news website Sierraloaded reports.
revealed that recent operations have targeted graveyards in Freetown’s Racecourse Cemetery, where individuals known as Kush boys have been tampering with graves.
Between 2020 and 2023 admissions to the Sierra Leone Psychiatric Hospital with illnesses linked to kush rose by almost 4,000 per cent, with the vast majority being young men between the ages of 18-25.
It first emerged in Sierra Leone around six years ago and induces a long-lasting, hypnotic high which can detach users from reality for several hours. The drug is also found in the neighbouring West African nation of Liberia.
President Bio announced the national emergency in a late night address on Thursday, deploring what he said were ‘the destructive consequences of kush on our country’s very foundation: our young people’.
An official from Freetown Municipal Council said that armed police were being deployed to protect cemeteries in the Sierra Leonean capital after graverobbers harvested bones from several corpses over night
In the past few weeks, police have supercharged efforts to combat graverobbing
Although it’s difficult to pinpoint the number of people affected, Sierra Leone’s sole psychiatric hospital, a renovated facility from the British colonial era, is swamped with young addicts brought in by families desperate for help
The president set up a National Task Force on Drugs and Substance Abuse, which will mean having centres in every district which are ‘adequately staffed by trained professionals to offer care and support to people with drug addiction’.
Kush’s low price makes it accessible to disillusioned, unemployed youth in Sierra Leone, where around a quarter of the population lives in poverty.
It typically will cost only 20p per joint, although reports suggest that many spend as much as £8 per day on the drug, potentially a huge sum considering the average income is just £400 per year.
Local communities have called on the government to tackle the scourge and help them deal with drug users.
Currently there is only one drug rehabilitation treatment centre in the whole country and that is in Freetown, but even that was only set up earlier this year and has just 100 beds.
On top of this police have been instructed to dismantle the drug supply chain through ‘investigations, arrests and prosecutions.’
Dr Abdul Jalloh, head of the Sierra Leone Psychiatric Hospital, said Mr Bio’s emergency declaration is ‘the right step’ and will be ‘crucial in addressing drug use’.
‘It signifies the prioritisation of resources, attention and intervention to combat this growing epidemic,’ he said.
One victim Abu Bakhar, 25, told Channel 4 News he gave up hopes of a music career as the drug turned him into a ‘zombie’.
He said: ‘Because of drugs I did not concentrate on studies. Because of drugs I did not concentrate on writing. Because of drugs I did not concentrate on anything’.
Experts believe that the very high unemployment rate among the young is also compounding the problem.
Like many others, he’s now homeless and lives on a landfill site on the outskirts of Freetown, amongst over a thousand others who reportedly live there.
Someone else who’s seen the effects it has, added: ‘Kush takes you to another world where you don’t know yourself.
‘It’s like it has something demonic in it. They see their friends and people around them dying and yet they still take it’.
However it is no longer just an issue in Sierra Leone, reports show it is moving across West Africa with more than a million people in the urban areas of Liberia and Guinea addicted.
‘Kush is a very dangerous drug like heroin or cocaine, it’s strong, cheap and easily available, there is weak regulation and control over the sale of the drug and it’s becoming widespread in West Africa,’ said Dr Edward Nahim, a consultant psychiatrist at the Sierra Leone Psychiatric Teaching Hospital.
‘The lack of jobs and opportunities is a driving force leading many youths into drug addiction after the disruption of economies by the Covid pandemic.’