Half a ton of captagon concealed in a shipment of spaghetti was seized in Syria before the amphetamine drug could leave the country clandestinely, the army said Thursday.
"
The competent authorities in the suburbs of Damascus confiscated a shipment of food products which contained addictive pills intended to be smuggled abroad,
" said an army spokesperson.
"
The pills weighing about 525 kilos were concealed in packages of spaghetti,
" he added in a statement, without specifying the destination of the cargo.
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In October, the Syrian authorities seized and confiscated 180,000 captagon pills in Damascus hidden in a box containing cakes.
Also in October, more than four million pills seized from a vehicle on the Damascus-Homs highway were confiscated by the authorities.
According to a report by the European Union-funded Center for Analysis and Operations Research, "
exports of captagon from Syria reached a market value of at least $ 3.46 billion
" in 2020.
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In July 2020, Italy seized a record cargo of 14 tonnes of the drug (84 million pills) from Syria.
Captagon is an amphetamine taken from an old psychotropic drug, according to a report from the French Observatory for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT).
It is made in particular in Lebanon and probably also in Syria and Iraq, mainly for Saudi Arabia.