Assad's fall upends the Captagon drug empire

As they pushed towards victory in early December, rebel forces in Syria uncovered the true extent of the Assad regime's worst-kept secret: its involvement in the production and trade of the powerful – and illegal – stimulant, Captagon.

Inside a so-called "soap factory" on the outskirts of Damascus, rebel fighters found "millions of Captagon pills and industrial quantities of precursor chemicals", said The Guardian – evidence of what was long alleged to be the "world’s largest Captagon production and export operation".

The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group leading the offensive to unseat Assad were "more than happy to show journalists" the extent of the production of the "speed-like" substance, said Sky News. But it's not at all clear what will happen now to this narco-empire, which had become the "most valuable sector of Syria's war-shattered economy".

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What is Captagon?

Captagon is an amphetamine-type stimulant that was first produced in the 1960s to treat conditions such as narcolepsy and ADHD. Its chemical name is fenethylline, but it is generally known by the brand name under which it was first marketed.

The drug "leaves users feeling confident and alert, along with a sensation of euphoria", but side effects include "anxiety and depression", said Al Jazeera. It was banned in much of the world in the mid-1980s, due to concerns about these adverse side effects and its addictive potential.

By then, though, Captagon had "picked up a following" in the Middle East as a recreational drug and, by the early 2000s, the region had become the centre of Captagon production and distribution. Often referred to as "chemical courage", it has reportedly been "used by soldiers in war-torn areas" to give them "focus and energy", said drugs researcher Nicole Lee on The Conversation.

But the illicit labs of the Middle East are not "fastidious" about the quality of production, said The New Yorker. Almost "no pills sold as Captagon today contain fenethylline", and the name has come to mean "any pill" that has an "amphetamine-type boost".

How big was Assad's Captagon operation?

The Assad regime "denied until its last day" that it was behind the illicit Captagon operation, said The Guardian, despite being accused by "neighbouring states" of funnelling vast amounts of the drug across its borders to Jordan and the Gulf States. But Assad's brother, Maher, headed a military unit that, in 2018, is known to have helped seize the "soap factory" the Syrian rebels recently discovered, said the paper.

Syria's government had been offered "huge sums as an incentive to crack down on the smuggling operation" by its neighbours, and US, EU and UK sanctions targeted those suspected of involvement in trafficking the drug. But it's "an open question" whether these efforts helped "to curtail the Captagon trade" or not, said The New Yorker.

A recent report by the Observatory of Political and Economic Networks suggested that, between 2020 and 2022, profits from the Captagon trade "for actors in Syria and Lebanon" was worth $2.4 billion (£1.9 billion) a year. Pills produced and distributed by "drug lords" across Syria would be sold for "anything from $2 to $20 each", said Sky News.

What will happen to Captagon market now?

Assad may be gone but it is unlikely that the Captagon market will disappear with him. There is still plenty of "appetite" for the drug, and the trade will now "shift" to other regions, said Al Jazeera. In what's called the "balloon effect", any clampdown on known areas of production will simply cause the creation and supply of Captagon to move to "new transit and production sites" at lower risk of detection.

While the upended Syrian Captagon network may not quell the Middle East's desire for drugs, it will have knock-on effects for those profiting from it. Hezbollah, for instance, already "under severe financial pressure" after its war with Israel, will feel a "strain" on its resources, after years of helping facilitate the trafficking of the drug for the Assad regime, said The Wall Street Journal.

Of course, there are still other drugs in plentiful supply, including methamphetamine – "a great deal of which reportedly already comes from Iran and Afghanistan", said Al Jazeera. Operators in both of these countries could well pick up on the stalled Captagon trade, too.