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A synthetic drug ravages youth in Sierra Leone. There's little help, and some people are chained (apnews.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In Sierra Leone, a cheap, synthetic drug is ravaging youth. Trash-strewn alleys are lined with boys and young men slumped in addiction. Healthcare services are severely limited. One frustrated community has set up what it calls a treatment center, run by volunteers. But harsh measures can be used.

The project in the Bombay suburb of the capital, Freetown, started in the past year when a group of people tried to help a colleague’s younger brother off the drug called kush. After persuasion and threats failed, they locked him in his room for two months. It worked. He has returned to university and thanked them for setting him free.

“The only time I left the room was when I went to the bathroom,” Christian Johnson, 21, recalled. He said he was motivated to kick the drug by thoughts of his family, the fear of becoming a dropout and the abandonment by many of his friends.

...

People rarely know what they’re getting with kush, a derivative of cannabis mixed with synthetic drugs like fentanyl and tramadol and chemicals like formaldehyde. In some communities, civil society workers say, people have dug up graves to grind bones to cut with the drug, seeking chemicals used in embalming.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago (1 children)

a derivative of cannabis mixed with synthetic drugs like fentanyl and tramadol and chemicals like formaldehyde.

What the fuck, Sierra Leone? Don't take something great and turn it into something horrible.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What colonialism and poverty does to a mfer

[–] scoobford 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Unfortunately, cutting drugs with things to make them either cheaper or stronger is pretty common most places, in fact it's basically universal here. Some weed dealers have relatively uncontaminated stock, but most don't.

And good fucking luck if you buy any kind of pills or anything.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

You know what else is really common in most places? That sweet, sweet colonialism and poverty, baby.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Does this report have the veracity of those krokodil reports?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Why, was that not real? The guardian does good reporting. And they very much seem to have reporters on the ground there.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Exaggerated handwringing, they overstated the extent and severity, and this article is probably doing the same

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Ravaged Just not enough to legalize regular old unlaced Marijuana. Reap what you sow.