Kush – the deadly drug wreaking havoc in West Africa

0:00A new deadly drug called Kush is ravaging West Africa. It's highly addictive and cheap to buy and made from ingredients from the UK. I'm Gareth Barlow and this is the Sky News Daily.

0:18Kush. It's a synthetic cannabinoid mixed with opiates and it's killed thousands in West Africa since it first emerged in 2022. Addicts suffer from infected open sores and rashes and they're unable to stand up But despite knowing the risks, they just can't stop Our Africa correspondent Yusra Elbegir has been looking into the issue that's crippling the region And she's found that the UK is part of the transnational drug trade fueling the Kush crisis And Yusra joins us now Yusra, talk to us about Kush I don't think, I've never heard of it, I don't think many people will have What exactly is it?

0:56Yousra Elbagir:Kush is a synthetic drug. It looks like marijuana, but it is so much more dangerous than marijuana could ever be. Chemicals are sprayed onto these marshmallow leaves and a very tiny amount is used in a joint like marijuana and it's smoked. It is extremely addictive. It was tested recently for the first time. and researchers found that some variants of Cush in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital, had nitazines, a synthetic drug compound, a version of nitazines that is 25 times stronger than fentanyl. And we knew that going in, going to Sierra Leone. So when we saw people, the impact it had on them physiologically, how they were responding to the high, we were shocked to see in person but we knew what cush is capable of already because of that research and then when you see the people kind of hanging over drooling completely incapacitated it kind of drives that point home that this is an extremely serious problem and it's not just a sierra leonean problem it's spreading across west africa and to other parts of the continent So this is a drug, a synthetic man-made drug, that people are then spraying onto plant leaves, rolling them up into a joint and smoking.

2:16What exactly is the heart of this compound? What exactly are they putting into their bodies?

2:21Yousra Elbagir:So it's a combination of synthetic opioids. It's a deadly mix. It's not just like K2 or Spice, where it's just a synthetic cannabinoid. It also has that opioid element. And I think that's what makes it so addictive. Also smoking it, the way it's ingested, it does kind of make it easier to consume. It doesn't have the same edge of injection or, you know, hard pills over, you know, under the table. It almost feeds into a culture of marijuana use that already exists in Sierra Leone. We've been told by people that you can't even find marijuana in Sierra Leone anymore, that Cush has now taken over marijuana in the market.

3:00In your footage, which is available on the Sky News app, there is just harrowing sights of people who are being broken by this drug. Talk to us about the conversations you had with those users. What are they saying to you? What is it doing to them?

3:16Yousra Elbagir:They can feel and see in the people around them and in themselves that they're deteriorating very quickly. I mean, the physical side effects of Kush include these horrendous sores on the legs, on the calves and on the feet that make it difficult for people to walk. People, thousands have died across the region from Kush induced illnesses, organ failure, malnutrition. You lose your appetite so people don't eat. When we were under the bridge that had that community of Kush users, volunteers brought in food and no one even got up to eat. And you were talking to me earlier about the fact that the drug creates this kind of numb outer shell, but then breaks through the emotion of what it's doing to people.

4:02Yousra Elbagir:I mean, we met a mother whose child was taken away from her by her own mother because of Kush consumption. So she hadn't seen her daughter in three years and she was trying to express herself to us. She couldn't even speak. She was so high. Her face looked like a mask that she couldn't she couldn't even like express anything on her face. And then you just see the tear kind of come through and slowly trickle down her face and she still can't say anything. And I'm saying to her, how are you feeling? Are you OK? And all she just says, I'm fine. I'm fine. It's that numbness that people are looking for.

4:41Yousra Elbagir:It's that escape from the hardships of their life. And then they find themselves in an even worse condition and are unable to even ask for help because they're completely incapacitated by the drug. There's always that question of how are people going about getting it? Because, you know, you're talking about mothers, about young 17 year olds. You're kind of talking about the whole spectrum of society. Where are they starting on this journey? I mean, it's evolved. It's been three years and it's done so well as a drug that they've managed to build this entrenched system. So there are these kingpins, I mean, that you'd kind of get in any drug syndicate.

5:17Yousra Elbagir:And then they have their dealers. But what we found even under the bridge was a kid being chased by a plain clothed police officer. And we're told, yeah, he was selling kush. but as we you know the the crowd gathers people are yelling even that police officer i've seen him smoke kush as well so even the government and law enforcement are being accused of being involved in the kush trade that's how prevalent it's become so it's unavoidable i mean you you turn any corner you'll find someone smoking kush and you can smell it it doesn't smell like anything natural smells like a fume like it's petrol yeah no it smells like um something burning but i can't explain it's like it smells like a chemical burning um i haven't smelled anything like it before it's just quite a specific chemical smell like a reaction is happening um and it's incredibly accessible so you just get handed a joint on the street and you could be trapped for life.

6:18Yousra Elbagir:There was also a lot of reports that human bones have been used in the manufacturing of Kush and that grave diggers dig up human bodies because the formaldehyde in the bones when people are being kind of prepared for burial in the body could be used for Kush. We haven't been able to verify that. Experts didn't find human bones in the samples that they tested, but that's a kind of widely held belief that you watch out for your loved one's graves because the gravediggers will come and sell the bones for Kush manufacturing. It feels as though that's one of those instances of there's no smoke without fire, that even if there's not been evidence of it, there must be truth in that for people to be able to describe something so horrific, so horrendous.

7:04And still the addictive power of this drug means that they can not look beyond it. but be able to accept that, to go through that journey to still get that high.

7:18Yousra Elbagir:I mean, it's interesting because we're looking now at how things have changed from when it first started, before it was seen as a very specific Sierra Leonean issue. Now it's spread to Liberia, the Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau. And these are all kind of countries you're getting further and further away from Sierra Leone. But even today, sharing the story on our Sky News channels, I'm seeing comments from people saying it's called Colorado in Nigeria. It's called Mambo in this country. And so I think what we have honed in on is a very specific version of a synthetic drug that is spreading really quickly.

7:53How did you first come about this story?

7:55Yousra Elbagir:So we'd heard about Kush. It's been reported since 2022, but it was very murky. My mentor is an illicit flows expert. And she was telling me that she felt that the region was being destabilized by this and kind of urged me to look into it. And that's when we found this report from February this year where they had tested the samples and had found this netazine. I spoke to Sophie, our producer, and our initial thought was, OK, we get to Sierra Leone. What's changed? How can we report on this differently? and reading the report and finding that shipments have been coming in from the UK, that dealers on the ground in Sierra Leone have been getting cush from the UK, propelled us to go and see what was going on.

8:36You came across a shipping container that had been seized from the UK. What is the UK's role in this? Is it manufacturing it in the UK and then sending it over or is it sending constituent synthetic parts?

8:48Yousra Elbagir:The testing capacity is limited. So when we got there, we were told preliminary testing showed that this was cushy ingredients. And just even visually looking at it, you see the marshmallow leaves that we've seen in joints. You see the vat of acetone that's used in Kush and it smelled like acetone. You didn't really need to see any labels. When we spoke to the experts who initially flagged that the UK was involved in what is now a transnational drug trade of Kush, they had reported Kush dealers were telling them they were getting pre-laced Kush from the UK. It's yet to be confirmed if the Kush that we found has been laced is illicit.

9:25Yousra Elbagir:And that is key because that will dictate whether or not the UK has a responsibility to step up and help Sierra Leone with combating Kush. The Sierra Leonean government have told us quite explicitly that they do need help, that they want the UK to help them with tackling the crisis. Ultimately, experts on transnational drug crime will say that every country in the supply chain has a responsibility to mitigate Kush. And that would include the UK because marshmallow leaves, even if they aren't laced, are illegal. You can't legally ship marshmallow leaves into Sierra Leone because of the Kush crisis.

10:02Yousra Elbagir:So they can consider it contraband in any case. But it's just about what applies here in the UK in terms of criminal law here around what would be illegal. Final thought from you. There is always in stories like this one moment that sticks with you above any other part of it. Even the whole story is harrowing, but there's always one standout moment. What was that? What was the bit that you'll never forget? It was the shelter with the teenagers. I mean as soon as we saw the sores on their legs we were all just completely taken aback we'd seen the start of sores under the bridge and then to go to a place where it had just become so advanced and it felt like they were waiting to die and then Garwin, our cameraman, goes in to get the shot from inside and he calls out to me, he's like, Yusri, you have to see this and so I go in and down this corridor there are like stalls like almost like shower stalls and there's a 18 year old who's like a skeleton and he's just it felt like on the verge of death completely emaciated his leg was just chewed chewed away and it was so shocking and the smell of the place and then we come out it smelled like yeah sour kind of wounds like rotting wounds um and you look into other stalls and you you can feel that people have died there before that just completely pulled us out i think of the moment and we just realized that this This is lethal.

11:49Yousra Elbagir:And there are young boys who will never live to see their life through because of this drug. But we keep checking on that young man. He's still alive. He's fighting for his life. But seeing his body and seeing him just shallow breathing, unable to speak, really drove the point home about what this drug does to people.

12:18that's all from Yuzra and for myself that's all from us for today the daily back again tomorrow