[Image: JOHN WESSELS / AFP/ ENACT Africa]
A bright red shipping container sits awkwardly on Sierra Leone’s Queen Elizabeth II Quay, a rusting Pandora’s box nestled among the usual steel crowd. But this isn’t your average cargo. It’s suspected to be packed with the chemical recipe for kush—a cheap, highly addictive, synthetic drug that’s tearing through West Africa like wildfire and turning its people into ‘zombies’.
Sky News got a rare peek inside the seized container. Ports Authority secretary Martin George stood beside ominous Amazon UK bags and vats of pungent acetone.
“Preliminary testing has shown that these items are kush ingredients,” he said. “Shipped from the United Kingdom.”
Busted. Again.
Teens unable to walk, mothers with rash-covered babies: How Kush is ruining lives ⚰️ #kush #UnitedKingdom #desingerdrugs #nitazens https://t.co/rMhD33nlKB pic.twitter.com/AE9eq8sNbQ
— boppinmule (@boppinmule) July 3, 2025
Turns out the UK is high on the watchlist—alongside the EU and South America—as a source of illegal imports feeding Sierra Leone’s drug crisis. And this particular batch? Allegedly laced with nitazenes, synthetic opioids so strong that one version found in Freetown is 25 times more potent than fentanyl.
“It was a shock to find them in around half of the kush samples we tested, as at that point there was no public evidence they had reached Africa,” said Lucia Bird Ruiz-Benitez de Lugo of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime.
She’s not exaggerating when she calls nitazenes “among the deadliest drugs available on retail drug markets across the world.”
And the fallout is nightmarish. Freetown’s streets are scattered with the tragic remains of addiction—teenagers with oozing sores, babies born with rashes, young men nodding out mid-step, drooling from highs too heavy for their bodies to bear.
This isn’t just a handful of “down-and-outs.” Entire communities are being swallowed by kush, particularly under the capital’s overpasses, where a group called “Under de Bridge family” lives in raw urban poverty, sustained and suffocated by the drug.
“This drug is evil. This drug is bad. I don’t know why they gave me this drug in this country. Our brothers are suffering. Some are dying, some have sores on their feet. This drug brings destruction,” he says.
“Look at me – just because of this drug. I have sores on my feet.”
Across a stream of sewage, a pregnant Elizabeth admits she knows the risks of smoking kush but says she has no choice. “I’ll keep smoking while I live here, but I have nowhere else to go. It helps me forget my worries and challenges,” she says, eyes heavy with resignation.
Just when things feel quiet, a plainclothes cop sprints past, chasing a child accused of dealing kush. It’s a bitter reminder: this isn’t just a public health crisis—it’s an economy, a survival strategy, and an epidemic that’s spreading fast.
#Kush has shaken this part of West Africa to core. It is highly #addictive, ever-evolving and affordable. https://t.co/nR7aV5eSWC
— Erin Associates (@ErinAssociates) July 3, 2025
In The Gambia, where kush has started crossing over, the government’s no-nonsense raids have driven the industry underground but not out. Blame is already taking a xenophobic turn, with Sierra Leoneans being targeted as scapegoats.
One Gambian prisoner, a Sierra Leonean arrested for dealing kush, tells Sky News he’s unrepentant: “Do I feel guilty for selling it? No, I don’t feel guilty… I needed a job. I needed to take care of my son.”
And that’s the dark catch-22—poverty fuels demand, and demand fuels a transnational trade built on desperation and chemical nightmares.
Experts like Lucia Bird are calling for a global crackdown on the entire supply chain. “Coordinated action is urgently needed,” she insists. “All countries in the supply chain bear responsibility.”
Until then, the red container sits at the port, a metal monument to a region battling a synthetic storm, with no umbrella in sight.
[Source: Sky News]
