Syria seizes 525 kgs of Captagon pills hidden in food shipment

The Syrian army seized half a ton of the stimulant Captagon concealed in a spaghetti shipment before it could be smuggled out of the country, it said Thursday.

“Relevant authorities in the countryside of Damascus confiscated a shipment of food items that contained narcotic pills intended for smuggling abroad,” an army spokesperson said.

“The pills weigh around 525 kilograms and they were hidden in packets of spaghetti,” he said in a video statement, without specifying the shipment’s destination.

It was the latest in a string of similar drug busts in Syria.

Last month, Syrian authorities confiscated 180,000 Captagon pills hidden inside a box containing Arabic sweets in Damascus.

Last month, authorities confiscated more than four million pills inside a vehicle on the Damascus-Homs highway.

Captagon is an amphetamine-type stimulant manufactured mostly in Lebanon and Syria.

According to an EU-funded report by the Center for Operational Analysis and Research, “Captagon exports from Syria reached a market value of at least 3.46 billion USD” in 2020.

In July last year, Italy seized a record 14-ton haul of the drug – or 84 million pills – that had arrived from Syria.

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