Cannabis and a million pills of of the amphetamine-like stimulant Captagon were set on fire on Wednesday in Damascus.
Syria’s new government forces raided warehouses in the former security zone of former Syrian President Bashar Assad’s intelligence forces and confiscated the drugs.
Since the fall of Assad, industrial-scale manufacturing facilities of Captagon have been uncovered around the country, which experts say fed a $10 billion annual global trade in the highly addictive drug.
Syria’s nearly 14-year-old civil war fragmented the country, crumbled the economy and created fertile ground for the production of Captagon. Militias, warlords and the Assad government transformed the production of the drug from a small-scale operation run by criminal groups into a billion-dollar industrial revenue stream.
Syrian rebel forces led by HTS (Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham) have seized large stockpiles of Captagon pills and other drugs in several military bases and other warehouses in Damascus and its countryside.
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