Captagon, the drug that turned Syria into a narco-state under Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship
The fall of the regime brings to light the scheme by which Damascus produced 80% of this substance during the war. The rebel authorities are burning the pills, which they discovered in workshops and mansions during their lightning advance
It was an open secret that, in the face of international sanctions, the now-deposed regime of Bashar al-Assad had turned Syria into a narco-state with the production and smuggling of captagon, a cheap and easy-to-produce drug nicknamed “poor man’s cocaine.” It was also an open secret that Maher, the dictator’s younger brother, whose whereabouts are now unknown, oversaw a business that, according to research by the New Lines Institute in New York, generated $2.4 billion annually. This money flowed into a system where corruption was not the exception, but the norm.
