They’re boning up to get high. Addicts digging up human bones as part of a recipe to make the drug kush has become a national emergency in Sierra Leone and is slowly moving to other West African ...

A red shipping container sits on the tarmac of Sierra Leone's Queen Elizabeth II Quay, under swinging cranes and towering stacks of similar steel boxes.

The synthetic drug kush, first seen in Sierra Leone in 2022, has now spread into much of West Africa while also evolving into ...

Kush, a synthetic cocktail usually made from marshmallow leaves, first appeared in Sierra Leone in the early 2020s and ...

Kush’s low price makes it accessible to disillusioned, unemployed youth in Sierra Leone, where around a quarter of the population lives in poverty. The drug is also found in the neighboring West ...

A kush dealer measures out a portion of kush, which will be wrapped in a paper packet and sold for as little as 5,000 Leones (roughly $0.25), in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

A kush dealer measures out a portion of kush, which will be wrapped in a paper packet and sold for as little as 5,000 Leones (roughly $0.25), in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Tommy Trenchard for NPR ...

In Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, a vast landfill choked with smoke from decades of decomposing waste serves as an unlikely marketplace for a devastating drug. Amid the billowing soot and the ...

A young man smokes kush at a hideout in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Monday, April 29, 2024. Sierra Leone declared a war on the cheap synthetic drug, calling it an epidemic and a national threat.

Sierra Leone's government has declared a public health emergency over the drug Kush. Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Kush, a synthetic cannabinoid, is spreading quickly for the promise of a stress-relieving high. But what's the impact on users — and Sierra Leonean society? And how are the authorities responding?