A legacy of the dictatorship. The illicit traffic in captagon had become a real economic engine for the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The country was known for producing the drug, allowing it to finance its war effort while circumventing Western sanctions.
The first traces of this vast illegal traffic have appeared since the fall of the regime. Sometimes without certainty about the source and location where the images were filmed, like this sequence published by CNN. At the Mazzeh base, in the suburbs of Damascus, AFP journalists noted, on Wednesday December 11, several thousand captagon tablets burning in a building near the landing strip. Images of this fire are circulating on social networks.
This stock was set on fire by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) fighters. The leader of the HTS, Abu Mohammed Al Joulani, also accused in his speech after the capture of Damascus, Sunday December 8, Bashar al-Assad of having “sown sectarianism and captagon” in Syria. Franceinfo answers three questions about this drug whose destiny has been linked to Syria since the start of the civil war.
1 What is the origin of captagon?
The name of this drug corresponds to the drug Captagon marketed by a German company in the early 1960s, recalls the French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Tendencies (OFDT) in a report. The white tablet is recognizable by a logo representing two half-moons. The drug, consisting of fenetylline, is prescribed primarily to treat attention deficit disorder, narcolepsy and as a psychostimulant.
The effects of fenetylline are similar to those of amphetamine and amphetamine derivatives. These narcotics are known to dispel the feeling of fatigue and hunger, providing a feeling of euphoria, hyperconcentration and self-confidence. Captagon was used during the period 1970-1990 as a doping product in sports circles, due to its psychostimulant properties. We even talk about“a Captagon madness” among footballers in the 1990s.
Captagon will be banned in France by a decree of October 1995. The manufacture and sale of the drug and any other preparation containing fenetylline. This substance is included on the list of narcotics by decree of February 22, 1990. The ban on this drug led to a contraband trade from the 1990s, explains the newspaper The Cross.
2 Who sold this drug?
The drug called captagon has little to do with the medicine, points out the OFDT. Even though it looks similar, with tablets stamped with a logo imitating two half-moons, stocks intercepted in 2010 show that illicit captagon is most often composed of amphetamine mixed with other substances, such as caffeine. or ephedrine.
The market is initially supplied mainly from Turkey and Balkan Europe, particularly Bulgaria. But this production of captagon then turned to the Middle East and in particular to Syria and Lebanon, after Bulgaria's entry into the European Union in the 2000s. This drug is very popular with wealthy young people in Arabia. Saudi Arabia and the petromonarchies of the Persian Gulf, underlines The World.
Thanks to the Syrian civil war, the trafficking of this drug will become one of the resources of rebel and jihadist armed groups, but also of loyalist forces. A favorable terrain, because Syria was the second pharmaceutical hub in the region. The country will be nicknamed “the republic of Captagon”.
In 2015, captagon was presented in France – wrongly – as the “terrorists' drug” after the November 13 attacks. The Bataclan terrorists were suspected of having acted under the influence of the substance. Even if the consumption of amphetamines by members of the Islamic State has been proven, no traces of drugs were detected after the autopsies of the bodies of the terrorists, recalls the OTDH.
3 How did Syria become a “narco-state”?
By regaining control in 2018 over a large part of Syria, the regime of Bashar al-Assad will industrialize the production of captagon. Smuggling is taking on a new scale, underlines the American think tank New Lines Institute in a report. The Syrian regime uses this trade as a means of political and economic survival in the face of international sanctions. The World underlines that captagon has become the regime's primary source of foreign currency, while the country's GDP is collapsing. The regime also relies on local alliances with armed groups like Hezbollah.
In an attempt to stop this drug trafficking, several Syrian officials are hit by American and European sanctions. The United States votes in 2022 for the “Captagon Act” to “interrupt and dismantle the captagon traffic of the Bashar al-Assad regime”. Sanctions were taken in particular against Maher Al-Assad, Bashar's brother, at the head of the 4th division of the army which supervised laboratories for the production of this drug and controlled the trafficking routes. The Council of the European Union targeted in 2023 members of the Assad clan, responsible for the production and trade of Captagon.
In recent years, seizures of this drug have increased in countries bordering Syria. In Iraq, the authorities have “record number of 24 million captagon tablets seized” for the year 2023 alone. In Turkey, nearly ten million tablets were seized in the country during the first ten months of 2024. The Persian Gulf States remain the preferred destination for the resale of captagon . To the point that in 2023, they made aid for the reconstruction of Syria conditional on stopping this trafficking.
