Captagon Drug Trade Booms with Hizballah’s Help
22nd April 2022
Trade in the amphetamine-type stimulant Captagon in the Middle East grew exponentially in 2021, to top $5 billion, posing an escalating health and security threat, a report this month from the New Lines Institute revealed.
Hizballah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, is one of the pivotal actors, along with Syrian President Bashar Assad’s family and high-ranking members of his regime. “Lebanon has served as an extension of the Syrian captagon trade, a key transit point for captagon flows, with Syrian government-connected Hizballah leaders participating in the trade’s expansion,” said the report’s authors, Caroline Rose and Alexander Söderholm.
Analysts believe drug trafficking is a key Hizballah revenue source, providing it with hundreds of millions of dollars annually.