A new drug called kush is wreaking havoc in west Africa, particularly in Sierra Leone where it is estimated to kill around a dozen people each week and hospitalise thousands.

The drug, taken mostly by men aged 18 to 25, causes people to fall asleep while walking, to fall over, to bang their heads against hard surfaces and to walk into moving traffic.

Kush should not be confused with the drug of the same name found in the US, which is a mixture of “an ever-changing host of chemicals” sprayed on plant matter and smoked. Kush in Sierra Leone is quite different; it is a mixture of cannabis, fentanyl, tramadol, formaldehyde and – according to some – ground down humans bones.

It is mixed by local criminal gangs, but the constituent drugs have international sources, facilitated no doubt by the internet and digital communications.

While cannabis is widely grown in Sierra Leone, the fentanyl is thought to originate in clandestine laboratories in China where the drug is manufactured illegally and shipped to west Africa. Tramadol has........

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