Sierra Leone’s president has declared a national emergency over rampant drug abuse.
Kush, a psychoactive blend of addictive substances, has been prevalent in the country for years.
President Julius Maada Bio called the drug a “death trap” and said it posed an “existential crisis”.
One of the drug’s many ingredients is human bones - security has been tightened in cemeteries to stop addicts digging up skeletons from graves.
Groups of mostly young men sitting on street corners with limbs swollen by kush abuse is a common sight in Sierra Leone.
Kush in Sierra Leone is quite different; it is a mixture of cannabis, fentanyl, tramadol, formaldehyde and – according to some – ground down humans bones.
Holy shit.
The formaldehyde gives it that extra bang you can only get from embalming fluid. If they didn’t cut it with human bone it might be too potent /s
Sounds a lot like propaganda to keep people away from it.
They might be getting the formaldehyde from human bones, depending on how it’s controlled in the country.
Nothing else about that sounds like drug war propaganda.
Why in the fuck would anyone purposefully add formaldehyde?
I find it really weird people ever believe that some people poison their drugs on purpose. What on Earth would be the point in poisoning your clientele on purpose? Poison does end up in drugs, but usually it’s because of stupid people making them, not because someone is purposefully poisoning people.
Kush is just a generic name for weed.
This is most definitely shitty drug war propaganda.
Cause smoking formaldehyde gets you high. Take it you’ve never heard of wet, but people will dip cigs or joints in it and smoke them. Wasnt uncommon back in the day that shitty weed would be laced with it.
Also kush is not referring to the weed strain here.
Yeah kush isn’t referring to the weed here.
It just so happens that strengthened (fentanyl/other opioid “strengthened”) weed happens to have gotten the colloquial name “Kush”, probably because it started off as people selling stronger and stronger smoke.
Probably why they then add formaldehyde as well.
And yeah now that you mention “wet”, I think I have heard about it sometime, but had not remembered that. Weird. I wonder how much that affected why it was in cigarettes.
Embalming fluid reportedly produces a hallucinogenic effect and causes the cigarette to burn more slowly, potentially resulting in a prolonged high.
https://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs11/12208/index.htm
Huh.
But my point is rather that because it’s called kush, people smoking formaldehyde and fentanyl is being sort of associated with just the word “Kush”, which in most contexts, just refers to weed. Thus it’s the same sort of anti-cannabis drug propaganda as always.
Yeah… that’s insane. I recently had surgery and was administered a small dose of fentanyl via IV while being held in post-op, I was also prescribed tramadol for pain management afterwards. Both drugs turned me into a zombie on their own. I can’t imagine mixing both, and also layering on weed, as a recreational substance.
I’ve had fentanyl post-op once and that shit works. Made it easy to understand how it could cause an addiction crisis.
Tramadol, on the other hand, does almost nothing in my experience. Doesn’t cause the high and doesn’t help with pain.
Perhaps I’m more sensitive to tramadol, because for me it does slightly dull pain, but also makes me profoundly drowsy and itchy. I took it for one day after being prescribed and decided that tylenol was a better option.
That sounds unpleasant. Does sound like you’re probably sensitive to it in some way.
If there are both, you won’t feel the tramadol. When the ratio is high enough, it will make it suck less when the Fentanyl wears off and give it longer action though. It’s kind of like saying they smoked meth with cocaine sprinkled on top. The meth is doing the heavy lifting.
Good. Advocates have been sounding the warning for a long time now.
With or without the alleged “human bones” that stuff is a scourge.
That’s how you get a fancy new prion disease…
