It's a slice of hell edged with pure white sand. In West Point, a troubled township in the south of Monrovia, Liberia, mountains of rotting waste have created a noxious stench. Its 80,000 inhabitants must make their way through filthy alleyways during this rainy season. People here are aware of the coming submersion of a coastline that is being swallowed up a little more each day by the Atlantic. But rising sea levels are not the only threat. Epidemics, too, have repeatedly engulfed West Point, including cholera, Ebola and tuberculosis. Those who survived have now been forced to confront a new disaster: drugs.

On this October afternoon, small groups of listless-looking figures surged into a darkened tin shack. Inside, around 30 men were smoking in the stifling heat. Abdu, who introduced himself as the gang leader, rules over this group of "zogos," as the drug users call each other. "They've been smoking everything for a long time. Heroin, Italian white [cocaine], marijuana," said the thirty-something, who swore that he'd kicked the habit. "But now we're losing the kids. They're using way too much kush. It's worrisome," he said with dismay, pointing to a boy curled up on the ground, eyes half-closed, grinning. Sold for 100 Liberian dollars (50 cents) a pellet, kush has been spreading like wildfire across the country's 10,000 slums. First discovered in 2018 in neighboring Sierra Leone, where it has been wreaking similar havoc, this marijuana-like substance is highly addictive.

"Help!" The cry came from 30-year-old Joseph Slero, aka "Rahu," and was echoed by his pals in the room. The man with tattoos on his arms was sweating profusely. He'd been an addict for seven years, using cannabis before starting kush. "I've tried to quit on my own, but I just can't. In withdrawal, I feel cold, I shake and I have excruciating stomach pains. I want to quit. My girlfriend smokes too. She's pregnant now. Our child won't be normal," he said, fidgeting with a bracelet with the words "Jesus loves zogos."

Joseph and the others have inherited Liberia's traumatic legacy, that of the civil wars that ravaged the country between 1990 and 2003. During this period, thousands of children were forcibly conscripted by warlords and plunged into drug addiction to opiates, alcohol and benzodiazepines, among others. Narcotics flowed freely in the battalions as a way to "toughen up" the young troops in the face of the enemy. Some of them had barely left childhood behind. After 14 years of internecine fighting, Liberian society emerged stunned − at least 250,000 people had been killed − as well as sickened by its drug-addicted veterans.

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