LONDON: Syrian authorities said on Wednesday that they thwarted an attempt to smuggle a large shipment of the illicit amphetamine captagon from Lebanon into the Al-Nabek district.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, working with the Internal Security Command in Rif Dimashq governorate, seized 832,000 captagon tablets and arrested one suspect, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency reported, citing official sources.
Authorities said that the suspect and the seized drugs had been referred to the judiciary for legal proceedings.
Al-Nabek sits along the eastern edge of the Anti-Lebanon mountain range near the Syrian desert, an area that has long served as a key corridor for cross-border smuggling.
Syria’s role in the regional captagon trade has reportedly changed since the fall of longtime ruler Bashar Assad, whose government was widely accused of profiting from the production and trafficking of the amphetamine-like drug.
The interim authorities, led by President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, have vowed to continue combating drug trafficking through what they describe as all legitimate means in pursuit of a “Drug-Free Syria.”
The UN said last year that large-scale captagon production in Syria had been disrupted since Assad’s ousting on Dec. 8, 2024. Still, major seizures continue.
On June 25, Syria seized about 150,000 captagon tablets at the Jaber border crossing with Jordan in a joint operation with Jordanian anti-narcotics authorities, according to the North Press Agency.
In December, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said that it had verified the seizure of at least 177 million captagon tablets across the Arab region since Assad’s downfall.
The agency said that Gulf countries remained the primary destination market, although shortages had begun to appear in several countries.
Last month, the Saudi Press Agency reported that Saudi authorities had seized more than 1.4 million amphetamine tablets hidden inside a rock-crushing machine in the Kingdom’s Northern Borders region.
