New Zombie Drug Coming Out of Sierra Leone May Contain Crushed Human Bone

New Zombie Drug Coming Out of Sierra Leone May Contain Crushed Human Bone

Move over xylazine, and step aside fentanyl.

A dangerous drug crisis is unfolding in Sierra Leone, West Africa, centered on a psychoactive substance known locally as “kush.” Unlike the synthetic cannabis product called “kush” in the US, the West African version is a highly toxic blend of drugs and chemicals, with reports indicating that ground-up human bone is one of its ingredients.

To say it is a “zombie drug” is an understatement of its effects.

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.

The crisis is so severe that last month, Sierra Leonean President Julius Maada Bio declared a national emergency. Bio described the crisis as an “existential threat” to the West African nation, likening its severity to previous national health emergencies such as the Ebola outbreak.

This new mixture is a potent combination that includes fentanyl made in China, tramadol (an opioid pain killer), formaldehyde (a toxic chemical included to enhance the drug effects), and allegedly ground human bones.

Why human bones? Nobody is quite certain.

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 a similar source, namely illegal laboratories across Asia. Formaldehyde, which can cause hallucinations, is also reported in this mixture.

As for ground human bones, there is no definitive answer about whether or not they are indeed found in the drug, where such bones would come from, or why they might be incorporated into the drug. Some people say that grave robbers provide the bones, but there is no direct evidence of this.

But why would bones be incorporated into the drug? Some suggest that the sulfur content of the bones causes a high. Another reason might be the drug content of the bones themselves, if the deceased was a fentanyl or tramadol user. However, both are unlikely. Sulfur levels in bones are not high. Smoking sulfur would result in highly toxic sulfur dioxide being produced and inhaled. Any drug content in bones is orders of magnitude less than that required to cause a physiological effect.

Dr Kars de Bruijne, senior research fellow at the Clingendael Institute and author of a report on kush, indicates that the presence of bone may be a rumor started by an uptick in grave robbery for valuables.

Dr de Bruijne suggests that the rumour originated from the fact that early forms of kush used the synthetic cannabinoid ADB, a greyish-white powder with the street name ‘bone’.

Combined with the fact that kush is sprayed with formaldehyde, which is used by mortuaries to preserve bodies, it is easy to see how the rumour began.

However, some are concerned that these rumours may have some basis in reality in a few fringe cases.

‘I’ve also been speaking to people in the judicial system, and they have said that there is an increase in cemeteries where graves have been opened,’ Dr de Bruijne explained.

‘I think in Sierra Leone it happens more often that rumour turns into a reality.

However, the spike in grave robbing might be better explained by addicts searching for valuables to sell and, as yet, there have been no confirmed cases of body parts in kush.

Now urgent warnings are being issued about kush, after a former flight attendant was accused of smuggling over $3 million worth of the deadly drug into Sri Lanka.

Charlotte May Lee, 21, from the United Kingdom, was seized at Bandaranaike Airport in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo earlier this month after allegedly carrying suitcases full of “kush,” a new drug originating in West Africa which kills an estimated dozen people a week in Sierra Leone alone.

Lee, from south London, claimed the drug stash — which has a reported street value of $3.3 million — was planted in her suitcases without her knowledge, her lawyer, Sampath Perera, told the BBC.

She is being held in harsh conditions in a jail north of Colombo where she has to sleep on a concrete floor, though Perera said she’s been in contact with her family.

Ex-flight attendant caught smuggling deadly new drug made of human bones faces 25 years in prison https://t.co/PWKdJHvdPi pic.twitter.com/etFzzEdtY8

— New York Post (@nypost) May 25, 2025

Whether or not this drug contains human bones is immaterial. It is a dreadful concoction, and given the impacts of fentanyl and xylazine on some of our inner cities, I dread its spread.

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