The world’s largest producer of Captagon • Was hidden in fruit • Has promised to stop smuggling
After the fall of the Syrian regime, drug trafficking has already decreased.
Syria was the world’s largest producer of the centrally stimulating drug Captagon – called “poor man’s cocaine”. The country’s new leader promises to stop production, which has caused huge problems in several Gulf states.
Cookies and chips are said to be manufactured in the industrial premises in Douma. In fact, the building was one of the Syrian regime’s drug factories. Millions of Captagon pills were produced here, a drug estimated to have generated revenues of an estimated $2.5 billion a year.
Drug manufacturing in the country generated more revenue than the entire country’s GDP, according to studies.
– They sent the drugs to Saudi Arabia and to the entire Gulf. They loaded them onto trucks like this, says Syrian militiaman, who is interviewed in the drug factory.
Was hidden in melons
The Syrian regime has always denied international accusations that it was involved in the production, but Syria’s new leader this week showed journalists around several of the dozens of factories found around the country.
The little pills were hidden in creative ways, in everything from fruit to electronics and building materials.
Manufacturing grew as international sanctions choked the country’s income. The UN determined that the country was the world’s largest producer.
“They killed their own people”
A brother and a cousin of dictator Bashar al-Assad are being singled out as key players, and the country’s military and security forces were monitoring production and smuggling routes into neighboring countries, according to US and Arab intelligence.
– Nothing about the Assad regime can surprise me anymore. They killed their own people. Of course, they exported narcotics to the whole world as well, says another militiaman.
The leader of the HTS militia has said that drug manufacturing must be stopped, and all manufactured pills will be burned. However, the organization has previously made money from both production and smuggling of the drug, according to researchers.
The future will tell if they can forego the billions in income that drug manufacturing has provided.