Moroccan police announced on Friday that they seized more than two million pills of captagon, a synthetic drug from the amphetamine family, and foiled "an attempt at international trafficking" of psychotropic drugs in the port of Tanger-Med, on the north coast. of the Kingdom.
According to the General Directorate of National Security (DGSN), the drug shipment was “hidden inside a cargo container, on board a maritime transport vessel flying the flag of a European country coming from Lebanon and to a country in West Africa".
Neither the European country nor the African country have been identified.
Read alsoFrom Syria to Saudi Arabia, on the road to Captagon, the drug that threatens youth
“The searches (…) led to the discovery and seizure of psychotropic substances hidden inside barrels containing consumer products, i.e. a total of 2,018,500 Captagon tablets,” said a press release from the DGSN, without further details.
An investigation is underway in Tangier.
While Morocco is ranked as the world's largest cannabis producer according to the UN, and a hub for smuggling kif to Europe, seizures of amphetamines there have been rare so far.
Captagon is an amphetamine-derived drug believed to treat narcolepsy or attention deficit disorder.
This stimulant, once associated with jihadists from the Islamic State (IS) group, has spread to the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia is its largest market.
Syria and Lebanon are considered the main producers.