What is Captagon, the addictive drug mass-produced in al-Assad’s Syria?

Four days since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, opposition fighters who have taken control of Damascus have uncovered large stashes of Captagon, a narcotic substance that has long been mass-produced in the country – so much so that it became almost synonymous with the nation’s removed leadership.

Ahmed al-Sharaa (also referred to as al-Julani), the top commander of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the most powerful group among the rebels who have overthrown al-Assad, has in recent days accused the former regime of turning Syria into “the world’s leading source of Captagon”. He has promised to crack down on Captagon manufacture and trade.

But what is this drug, and why is it so central to how Syria has engaged with its neighbours in recent years?

What is Captagon, and where was it invented?

An addictive, amphetamine-type stimulant, Captagon has been primarily produced in Syria in recent years and smuggled to the Gulf states. That turned the narcotic substance into a bargaining chip for al-Assad in talks that led to the Arab League reinstating Syria’s membership last year, as nations looked to curb the illicit drug trade.

At a May 1, 2023 meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Amman, Damascus agreed to cooperate with Jordan and Iraq to identify sources of drug production and smuggling, according to a statement from Jordan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A week later, a high-profile Syrian drug smuggler and his family were killed in an air raid, attributed to Jordan, in southern Syria.

But Captagon didn’t start in Syria.

Captagon was the brand name of a psychoactive medicine produced in the 1960s by the German company Degussa Pharma Gruppe. It was mainly prescribed as a treatment for attention deficit disorder, narcolepsy and as a central nervous system stimulant.

Captagon tablets contained fenetylline, a synthetic drug of the phenethylamine family to which amphetamine also belongs.

In 1986, fenetylline was included in Schedule II of the United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances 1971, and most countries discontinued the use of Captagon. The International Narcotics Control Board said in 2011 that no country had produced fenetylline since 2009.

But production didn’t really stop, did it?

As official production ceased, some of the remaining stocks were smuggled out of Eastern Europe, in particular Bulgaria, to the Middle East.

Eventually, new counterfeit tablets labelled Captagon were produced in the 1990s to early 2000s in Bulgaria, according to a 2018 report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drugs Addiction. The drugs were then smuggled out of the country by Balkan and Turkish criminal networks to the Arabian Peninsula.

Strict crackdowns on production by Turkish and Bulgarian authorities, which included the closure of 18 mostly large-scale laboratories involved in amphetamine synthesis, resulted in a drastic reduction in trade from the Balkans.

Why was Syria making so much Captagon?

In 2011, after a brutal government crackdown on anti-Assad protesters, Syria descended into civil war. Internationally isolated and racked by fighting, the country was plunged into an economic crisis.

Although Damascus denied any involvement in the trade, observers say production and smuggling of the drug brought in billions of dollars for al-Assad, his associates and allies as they looked for an economic lifeline.

According to a New Lines Institute report, the now-ejected Syrian government used “local alliance structures with other armed groups such as Hezbollah for technical and logistical support in Captagon production and trafficking”.

Experts say most of global Captagon production is now in Syria, with the wealthy Gulf states as the primary destination.

What have Jordan and the Gulf states done about it?

Since 2022, countries that had large amounts of Captagon passing through their borders have ramped up efforts to stem the flow from Syria.

In February 2022, Jordan’s army said it had killed 30 smugglers since the start of the year and foiled attempts to smuggle 16 million Captagon pills into the kingdom from Syria – surpassing the entire volume seized throughout 2021.

In late August 2022, Saudi authorities made their largest seizure as they uncovered 46 million amphetamine pills that were being smuggled hidden in a shipment of flour.

A spokesperson for the Saudi General Directorate of Narcotics Control said it was the “biggest operation of its kind to smuggle this amount of narcotics into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in one operation”.

In February 2023, a man was arrested at Abu Dhabi airport in the United Arab Emirates after he tried to smuggle 4.5 million Captagon tablets in cans of green beans.

What is the rest of the world doing?

Although the drug is relatively unknown outside of the Middle East, countries like the United Kingdom and the United States have raised concerns over its production in Syria.

Both countries imposed new sanctions on Syrians connected to the trade in 2023. A UK government statement said 80 percent of the world’s Captagon is produced in Syria and is a “financial lifeline” for al-Assad’s regime “worth approximately 3 times the combined trade of the Mexican cartels”.

It also stated that Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed groups facilitate the industry “and in doing so fuel regional instability and [create] a growing addiction crisis across the region”.

In December 2022, the US also introduced The Captagon Act, which mandates US agencies to target the illicit trade amid fears that the drug could appear on US shores.

How did Captagon get Syria back into the Arab League?

Arab League members’ desire to stop Captagon production and trade out of Syria appears to have been a crucial bargaining chip for Damascus.

A Jordanian official at the Arab foreign ministers’ meeting on May 1, 2023, said Syria would need to show it is serious about reaching a political solution because this would be a condition to lobby for the lifting of Western sanctions, a crucial step for funding reconstruction in Syria.

Saudi Arabia, which – as of 2023 – was the biggest market for the drug, also sought assurances as it discussed the normalisation of ties with Damascus.

The kingdom supported rebel groups fighting government forces in the early years of the war. But, more recently, it showed a desire to soften relations as part of a wider shift in regional diplomacy, including a rapprochement with Iran.

After the meeting in Amman, the foreign ministers of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria said Damascus had agreed to “take the necessary steps to end smuggling on the borders with Jordan and Iraq”.

So who was the drug kingpin killed in Syria in 2023?

Foreign ministers from the 22-nation Arab League voted in May 2023 for Syria’s return at a meeting in Cairo.

Just a day later, Marai al-Ramthan, a suspected Syrian drug smuggler, and his family were killed in an air raid in southern Syria, an attack attributed to Jordan, according to a war monitor.

Al-Ramthan was considered “the most prominent drug trafficker in the region, and the number one smuggler of drugs, including Captagon, into Jordan”, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.