DAMASCUS — A now-abandoned potato chip factory in a remote corner of Damascus, Syria, is revealing one of its many dark but open secrets. Overthrow the Bashar al-Assad regime.
A CBS News team accessed the scene and discovered a warehouse stocked with hydrochloric acid and acetic acid on an industrial scale. These are the precursor chemicals needed for manufacturing. captagonone of the most popular street drugs in the Middle East and beyond.
Ahmed Abu Yakin of Syria Hayat Tahrir Al Shamor HTS, either Main group in charge of country After President Assad fled December 8th. Yakin said Captagon’s huge underground cache was discovered just days after the rebel takeover. The tablets are packed into a large pile of home voltage adjustment kits ready for shipping.
Captagon, also known as the “poor man’s cocaine,” is a highly addictive amphetamine-type stimulant.
“I feel sorry for the young people who became addicted,” Yakin said. “The Assad regime was trying to destroy a generation, but they couldn’t care less. They only cared about making money.”
And the money is staggering. Analysts estimate that Assad’s regime earns $5 billion a year from trade, which dwarfs Syria’s official budget and is a critical lifeline for the bankrupt state. The drug costs just a few pennies to produce, but can be sold for up to $20 per pill. The harvest found in the abandoned factory could be worth tens of millions of dollars.
Neighboring countries have long accused Assad’s Syria of being the world’s leading supplier of illegal drugs. In March 2023, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned several Syrians, including two of Assad’s cousins, for their alleged involvement in “dangerous amphetamines.”
“Syria is a world leader in producing the highly addictive Captagon, much of which is trafficked through Lebanon,” said Andrea Gacchi, then director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. . “Together with our allies, we will hold accountable those who support the Bashar al-Assad regime with illicit drug proceeds and other financial means and enable the regime’s continued oppression of the Syrian people.”
Now, his hugely profitable drug business appears to have been crushed along with his brutal and corrupt regime. For Yakin, Captagon has no place in Syria’s future.
“We will destroy everything,” Yakin said. “We will eliminate anything related to drugs, anything related to the criminal Assad regime.”
middle east crisis
more
more
