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A cheap synthetic drug known as kush is ravaging West Africa and its epicentre is Sierra Leone. The government has declared kush a public health emergency, but poverty and trauma are slowing efforts by communities to help unhook young people from its sometimes deadly hold. <\/em><\/p>\n At 20, Ousmane’s future should be unfolding. Instead, he spends his days at a drug point in Grey Bush – a ghetto in the capital Freetown – hunting for money for his next dose of kush.<\/p>\n “This drug, honestly, it makes me angry at…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a> A cheap synthetic drug known as kush is ravaging West Africa and its epicentre is Sierra Leone. The government has declared kush a public health emergency, but poverty and trauma are slowing efforts by communities to help unhook young people from its sometimes deadly hold. At 20, Ousmane’s future should be unfolding. Instead, he spends […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":201263,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1109],"tags":[258,256,22404,37805,6572,7271,257,6571,1135,11142,254,11667,6276],"class_list":["post-201262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sierra-leone","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-hooked","tag-kush","tag-leone","tag-leones","tag-news","tag-sierra","tag-sierra-leone-news","tag-smoking","tag-south-africa-today","tag-survive","tag-youth"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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South Africa Today Africa \u2013 West Africa Sierra Leone<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"