By Kemo Cham
Campaigners have called for collective efforts in the fight against drug abuse in Sierra Leone as a new report confirms the presence of a dangerous chemical in Kush, the substance at the center of the ongoing drug epidemic in the country.
Kush is believed to have caused the death of thousands of people in the country. And study conducted by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) revealed that it contains mainly Nitazene, a synthetic opioid responsible for multiple deaths in Europe and north America.
Preliminary findings of the study co-authored by the Clingendael Institute, were first published in June 2024, shortly after the government declared a public health emergency on drugs and substance abuse. Further studies recommended by the researchers for confirmation resulted in the findings presented during a stakeholders’ engagement in Freetown on Wednesday. Among other key findings, it reveals that the substance in the Sierra Leonean market contains mainly Nitazene, which is described as very addictive and deadly comparable to fentanyl, and synthetic cannabinoids. The report also shed light on the origin of components used to manufacture Kush, the market structure, and proffers recommendations to tackle the crisis.
“Kush has become a menace which government alone cannot address,” said Abdurahman Sesay, Director General of the National AIDS Secretariat (NAS). He warned that failure to act urgently and appropriately will have a potentially dire consequence on the country’s youth population and by extension its development.
Available data show that majority of those affected by drug and substance abuse in Sierra Leone are young people.
GI-TOC conducted this study in collaboration with local civil society partners, including Social Linkages for Youth Development and Child Link (SLYDCL), which convened Wednesday’s meeting. SLYDCL works with young people who inject drugs, with the support of organizations like NAS. Mr Sesay cited a 2013 study which identified people who inject drugs among key populations – people highly vulnerable to the HIV virus. He said that the evolving nature of drug use in the country is impacting on their response to the HIV epidemic.
“Injecting drugs is expensive and most people are now going for the less expensive and it is impacting on the response to HIV/AIDS,” he said.
Sesay also spoke on the potential negative implications of the drug crisis on health infrastructure and healthcare financing if urgent action isn’t taken.
Habib Kamara, Executive Director of SLYDCL, said the plan is to transform some of the findings in this project to national programmes and policies, hence the engagement of relevant stakeholders.
Some key areas of concern highlighted in the report include access to rehabilitation services for drug users and harm reduction. All of these, according to campaigners, hinge on the availability of a modern anti-drug law.
Yet there is widespread concern among campaigners about the slow pace of the rehabilitation process, which they say illustrates the challenges facing the fight against this crisis. According to data provided by the Ministry of Social Welfare, out of over 2,000 drug addicts who registered for rehabilitation, only 400 have been admitted up to the last graduation in August. And among these, majority have faced either relapse or are in remission to mental health, pointing to a failure in addressing other aspects of the national response efforts.
Sierra Leone has only two national drug rehabilitation centers, one located in Hastings, outside Freetown and the other in the southern city of Bo. None of them presently have inmates, due to lack of resources to run them.
For Dr Godswill Agada, Assistant Technical Director at World Vision International Sierra Leone, the study is one of the hallmarks of domesticating what is a local problem, noting that it already identified the supply and demand chain, which is critical in dealing with the crisis.
“I think we have very competent and well-resourced government agencies that can actually engage, advocate and deal with the supply chain,” he said.
Ansumana Konneh, Director of Mental Health in the Ministry of Social Welfare, while acknowledging the severity of the drug crisis in the country, reiterated government’s commitment to the fight it. But he warned that it would require a concerted effort to achieve the goal.
“The impact of addiction is very serious on Sierra Leone,” he said, adding: “In spite of whatever we are doing, if the supply of drugs in this country still continues to flow, we are wasting our time.”
Other speakers at the event included Dr Mohmed Bangura, Director of Medical Services at the Sierra Leone Police, who warned that the drug crisis is fuelling criminal behaviour and violence in the country.
“Many young people arrested for petty crimes or public disorders aren’t actually criminals, they are just addicts and victims of misinformation and systemic neglect,” he said.
“As law enforcement department, we cannot do it alone. It is a crisis. It needs collective efforts,” he added.
Dr Bangura said the chemical composition of the drugs in circulation in the country were deeply alarming, which he said points to the complications displayed by victims of drug abuse in the form of psychosis and organ failure.
“Lack of regulation has a broader challenger,” he said, stressing on the need for a multisectoral approach to reduce the inflow of the drugs and increase other related services.
Dr Abdul Jalloh, Director of Mental Health and Non-Communicable Diseases in the Ministry of Health, reechoed the importance of treating drug users as victims rather that criminals. He revealed that his office has been working on improving on the number of addiction professionals in the country to appropriately respond to the crisis.
The keynote address was given by Charles Moinina, who spoke on behalf of the Minister of Youth. He stressed on calls for protection of the youth population against drugs, describing them as the “greatest human resource capacity of country.”
