The use of a Syrian war drug that goes by the name Captagon, is on the rise, and the highly addictive pill is said to give soldiers superhuman abilities. The emergence of the drug comes as Syria becomes deeply engulfed in a civil war that has claimed the lives of over 100,000 people, and caused roughly two million more to be displaced from their homes. As the Guardian reports, the war is now being fueled by both the export and consumption of rapidly increasing quantities of illegal drugs.
Several reports from major news agencies across the globe revealed that Captagon is mostly being consumed in the Middle East, and there have been few reported cases of it being used elsewhere. The drug, which is being used by soldiers on both sides, has brought in a substantial amount of money which is most likely being used to provide weapons to fighters.
A report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime revealed that Syria has been a transit point for the transportation of illegal drugs from countries such as Europe, Turkey and Lebanon. However, due to a lack of policing in the region, rebels have now turned the country into a major producer. According to Yahoo! News , large quantities of the so-called Syrian war drug are also illegally smuggled abroad, with Saudi Arabia being a major market where the authorities repeatedly report seizures.
Although authorities can’t conclusively confirm that profits from the sale of Captagon are being used to buy weapons, experts highly suspect that this is the case.
“Syria is a tremendous problem in that it’s a collapsed security sector, because of its porous borders, because of the presence of so many criminal elements and organized networks,” the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) regional representative, Masood Karimipour, was quoted as saying . “There’s a great deal of trafficking being done of all sorts of illicit goods — guns, drugs, money, people. But what is being manufactured there and who is doing the manufacturing, that’s not something we have visibility into from a distance.”
Record seizure of #Captagon amphetamine tablets in southern #Turkey https://t.co/c7LHsSgsUi pic.twitter.com/PPp1voPjPL
— Hürriyet Daily News (@HDNER) November 20, 2015
Col. Ghassan Chamseddine, head of the drug enforcement unit in Lebanon, explained that massive quantities of the drug are stored in trucks passing from Syria to Lebanese ports, where they are eventually shipped to the Gulf.
Although many people have never heard of the drug, Captagon first came on the scene in the 1960s and was banned in most countries by the 1980s due to its highly addictive properties. However, the drug is still widely being used in the Middle East.
This is the tiny pill fueling the #Syrian civil war https://t.co/fDkDXl7hmA #Captagon
— Frances Fisher? (@Frances_Fisher) November 21, 2015
The Syrian war drug is described as a powerful amphetamine tablet based on the original synthetic drug known as “fenethylline.” The pill produces an almost immediate euphoric intensity in users, which allows Syrian fighters to stay up for days, killing with a numb, reckless abandon, Washington Post wrote .
Captagon is relatively easy to make and most of its ingredients are sold legally at a cheap price. Its effects are similar to those of cocaine and it makes users talkative, awake and full of energy.
“You can’t sleep or even close your eyes, forget about it,” said one unidentified Lebanese user, who spoke on camera about the drug to the BBC in a recently aired documentary. “And whatever you take to stop it, nothing can stop it. I felt like I own the world high,” another user said. “Like I have power nobody has. A really nice feeling.”
[Image via Shutterstock]
