One of the world’s most notorious drug barons, Jos Leijdekkers (Bolle Jos), has reportedly been tracked to Sierra Leone.
Europe is issuing threat after threat, demanding that the Sierra Leonean government hand him over. The Sierra Leonean government, however, says it must first locate the person sought. It also made it clear that Sierra Leone and the Netherlands have no existing extradition treaty. Even if they did, every individual has rights and must be allowed to defend themselves before being extradited, if guilty.
This has not stopped the pressure from the Dutch. They asked the European Union to suspend all aid to Sierra Leone. And the aid has been suspended even though they claim it has nothing to do with Leijdekkers (Bolle Jos).
The Western media are going all out, painting Sierra Leone as a narco-funded state. Dutch newspaper NL Times, citing a report by Dutch broadcaster RTL, said Leijdekkers (Bolle Jos) had turned Sierra Leone into a hub for his international cocaine operations, with billions of dollars in drug money allegedly flowing through the country’s economy each year.
The report also alleged that he obtained a Sierra Leonean diplomatic passport in return for investments in the country’s economy and developed close relationships with political and business elites.
The Economist published an article claiming that Sierra Leone has effectively been captured by Jos Leijdekkers.
The Guardian released an investigative piece on how Bolle Jos turned Sierra Leone into a narco state.
But something just feels completely off about this whole war on drugs pushed by the West and its media empire. To understand what I mean, some history lessons are in order.
The Opium Wars
In the 1700s, China was battling an opium epidemic.
The opium was largely produced in British-controlled India and shipped into China by British and other foreign merchants. The British East India Company and, later, the British Indian government made enormous revenues from the opium trade.
The Crown was earning so much revenue from poisoning the people of China that when China finally prohibited opium imports in 1796, Britain declared war. This, my friends, was what led to the First Opium War, which lasted from 1839 to 1842 and claimed the lives of over 10,000 people.
Britain won. China lost Hong Kong, was forced to pay compensation, and was flooded with opium.
The Second Opium War—now supported by France—ran from 1856 to 1860 and was essentially about forcing China to legalise the opium trade, which before then was still illegal. China lost again.
Britain kept selling opium to China until 1917, when the trade ended officially.
The Crack Epidemic
In the 1980s to early 90s, African-American communities in the United States were hit by the crack epidemic. The government was alleged to be ignoring the crisis because it affected predominantly Black neighbourhoods.
Then, in 1986, following the cocaine-related death of basketball star Len Bias, the controversial Anti-Drug Abuse Act was passed, creating the notorious 100-to-1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. Between 1989 and 1990, 83% of federal offenders convicted of crack trafficking were African-Americans. By 2000, that number was 85%.
However, journalist Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance investigation revealed that the drugs poisoning African-American communities were actually produced by Contra operatives alleged to be backed by the CIA to fund a war abroad. Subsequent official investigations found evidence that Contra-linked individuals were involved in drug trafficking, U.S. agencies knew of allegations surrounding that trafficking, and the government’s foreign-policy priorities sometimes took precedence over aggressively confronting those activities.
The Hypocrisy
While it might no longer be in the national interests of the West to support the drug trade, the question remains: if it was okay for the British and American governments to fund their economies and wars using drugs, why should it be wrong for Colombia, Mexico, Afghanistan, or any African nation to do the same?
One could even argue that crimes committed centuries ago, or as recently as 30 years ago, do not mean the West still holds the same stance towards drugs as it did then. Is that true, though?
A report published in February 2025 by Lucia Bird Ruiz-Benitez de Lugo and Dr Kars de Bruijne identifies China, the Netherlands, and “most likely the UK” as key external sources of kush and/or its active ingredients reaching Sierra Leone. The same Netherlands that is demanding the repatriation of Bolle Jos and asking for sanctions against Sierra Leone. This reeks of hypocrisy. Or do the rules only apply to “Black” Africans?
The Dutch and UK governments have denied the “allegations” made in the report. So let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. They were, after all, listed as transit countries in the report, not necessarily producing the drugs themselves. But so are the West African countries they love to castigate.
Why should African countries be treated as uniquely illegitimate when they face exactly the same global drug networks that operate through Europe, North America and Asia?
If a shipment passes through Rotterdam, London, Freetown or Lagos, the basic reality is the same:
It is part of a global supply chain.
Who Gets to Point the Finger?
The war on drugs should absolutely be fought. With everything we’ve got. Drug addiction has ruined families, futures, and in some cases, entire communities. But the West does not get to point fingers at Sierra Leone, calling it a “drug-captured state,” sitting in their parliaments and deciding what punishment is fit, as if Sierra Leone is a vassal state.
The recent Western war on drugs did not begin because Western societies suddenly discovered that drugs were harmful. They had known that for centuries.
What changed was who was suffering from the drugs, who was profiting from them and whose interests were being threatened.
They are now the market. It is their children who lie hunched over on street corners. It is their families being torn apart by drugs. They have lost control over the drug trade that once funded their agencies, governments, and empires. The genie is out of the bottle. And it refuses to go back in.
The same countries that once tolerated, profited from or failed to adequately confront elements of the global drug trade are now demanding that everyone else follow a much stricter set of rules.
To be clear, this author does not support the drug trade. It has destroyed families and countless bright futures. But declaring war against it only because your people are now the victims—rather than the enablers—reeks of hypocrisy.
The West lacks the moral capacity to judge and is only crying out now because they, their children, and their families are on the receiving end of the drug epidemic. If the tables were turned, they probably would not care.
The Drug War Should Be About Drugs—Not Power
The George Jung, Bolle Jos’, and Pablo Escobars of this world are dangerous men. But by whose standards?
Drug trafficking destroys lives. We can all agree on that.
But the moral authority to fight the drug trade should not depend on whether the victims live in Freetown, Bogotá, Kabul, Lagos, London or Washington.
Everyone should be held to the same standard.
Because if the war on drugs is really about protecting human beings from the destruction caused by narcotics, then it should not matter whether those human beings are Black, White, Asian, African, European or American.
But if the rules keep changing depending on who is making the money, who is suffering and whose children are dying—then perhaps this has never been just a war on drugs.
Perhaps it has always also been a war about power, money and selfish national interests.
The post From the Opium Wars to Bolle Jos: Exposing the Double Standards of the West’s War on Drugs appeared first on Sierraloaded.