The fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has upended the largest player in the illicit Captagon trade in the world as journalists, civilians, and activists uncover industrial-scale production sites of the powerful stimulant.
The Wall Street Journal said that Syria’s drug trafficking empire was “the most profitable” in the Middle East and was the primary party responsible for fueling the use of Captagon — a stimulant that has fueled war and terrorism in the region since roughly 2011, when Syria’s civil war erupted.
The addictive stimulant has earned the nicknames “the drug of jihad” and “the poor man’s cocaine” because of its ability to keep users wide awake and give fighters extra confidence and stamina.
The Assad regime’s involvement in the production of the drug brought the dictator several billion dollars per year that he used to offset international…
