"Interviews with arrested traffickers and producers of Kush revealed that in some cases, the synthetic cannabinoids were manufactured domestically inside Sierra Leone, from imported "kits" containing tail-less precursor chemicals (similar to MDMB-5Br-INACA) which were supplied along with the appropriate precursor to add the tail to the 1-position NH, so all that had to be sourced locally were readily available chemical reagents to catalyse the reaction. The crude reaction product was then mixed directly into plant material without further purification, resulting in significant contamination with synthetic byproducts and solvent residues, believed to be responsible for some batches having strong chemical odor. Some producers of Kush did report also incorporating tramadol diverted from medical sources into batches of Kush, but none of the samples that were analysed were found to contain tramadol."
"Kush is unusual in that it commonly contains both potent synthetic cannabinoids and potent synthetic opioids, combined in the same product. It appears that for the first few years Kush was simply a synthetic cannabis product similar to those previously sold in numerous countries overseas, but from around 2022 onwards, nitazene class opioids started to be used instead of, or alongside, the synthetic cannabinoid active ingredients, resulting in an upsurge in both addiction and overdose deaths."
"While Kush initially emerged in Sierra Leone and is still most commonly encountered there, it has subsequently spread across West Africa, and by 2024 use of Kush had become widespread in Liberia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and the Gambia, and had been reported to a lesser extent in Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria and Ivory Coast."
Why is China supplying precursor chemicals for synthetic drugs to developing African countries? How and why are extremely tainted synthetic opioids being sold to Africans under the name of an old Afghan cannabis species?