Mick Hartley

This addictive, amphetamine-like pill, sometimes called "poor man's cocaine", was mass produced in Syrian laboratories under the control of the Assad regime. Its use spread across the Middle East: the bodies of some of the Hamas October 7th jihadis were found with captagon pills in their pockets. The trade was worth an annual $5.6bn (£4.5bn) acccording to the World Bank.

Now the new Syrian leaders have vowed that the drug will be "purified by the grace of God" from the country, but – assuming they mean what they say given the huge profits involved – the actual destruction of the captagon factories will be the easy part. The users themselves, though, can't just be forgotten.

A report from Emir Nader at the BBC:

So how will al-Sharaa and his group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), deal with the large number of people in Syria and around the Middle East addicted to Captagon who may suddenly find themselves without a supply?

Caroline Rose, an expert on Syrian drug trafficking at the New Lines Institute, has concerns around this. "My fear is that they will really crack down on supply and not necessarily try to do any sort of demand reduction."

But there is a broader question at play too: that is, what effect will the loss of such a lucrative trade have on Syria's economy? And as those behind it move aside, how will al-Sharaa keep at bay any other criminals waiting in the wings to replace them?

The proliferation of Captagon pushed the Middle East into a genuine narco-war.

While filming with the Jordanian army on their desert border with Syria, we saw how the soldiers had reinforced their fences and learned about their comrades who had been killed in shoot-outs with Captagon smugglers. They accused the Syrian soldiers across the border of aiding the smugglers.

Other countries in the region have been just as disturbed by the trade.

For a while, Saudi Arabia suspended imports of fruit and vegetables from Lebanon because authorities were frequently finding shipping containers full of produce like pomegranates which had been hollowed out and filled with bags of Captagon pills.

While the new regime have promised a crackdown on the captagon trade as apart of their efforts to build positive relations with their Middle Eastern neighbours, the signs aren't good:

There is little evidence of investment in rehabilitation from the time HTS controlled Idlib province in north-west Syria, according to Ms Rose. "[There was a] very poor picture for trying to address Captagon consumption," she says.

She also says there has already been an uptick in another drug being trafficked through Syria.

"I think many users will seek out crystal meth as an alternative, especially users who have already established a tolerance to Captagon and need something that's a bit more strong."

Crystal meth…as manufactured in large quantities by, um, North Korea. Though, according to recent reports, that may no longer be the case:

Opium is replacing methamphetamine as the drug of choice in North Korea as the pandemic has disrupted Chinese supplies of the raw materials needed to make meth, residents in the country told Radio Free Asia.

Perhaps a similar switch could happen in Syria and the Middle East. Afghanistan may no longer be the world's largest opium supplier – overtaken by Myanmar after the Taliban imposed a ban in 2022 – but it still goes on. Keeping it all, as it were, in the Islamic family.