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Syria seizes hummus bowls made out of crushed Captagon pills | Drugs News


Amphetamine has become one of the most popular drugs in the Middle East, with a trade value of up to $5.7 billion.

Syrian authorities announced they had seized 24kg of Captagon that had been crushed and reconstituted to look like bowls of hummus.

The interior ministry said the amphetamine was made in tablet form, but smugglers crushed it and used the mixture to “mold pottery-like dishes coated with a brown glue”.

A man was arrested in Damascus and admitted his connection to the thwarted human trafficking plot, the statement said, without specifying where the shipment of fake hummus bowls was located.

The ministry added that an investigation into the incident is still underway.

A video shared by the Interior Department’s Facebook page shows dozens of bowls of hummus on the floor, with one individual taking one such bowl and using a knife to peel off the brown glue, revealing the Captagon mold.

In recent years, Captagon traffickers have found ever more imaginative locations to hide drugs, from fake orangeshonest hollowed out pomegranate and pitted olives.

They have intentionally manufactured various decorative objects or construction equipment with potions containing niches, which can only be obtained at the other end by smashing their crafts.

By manufacturing objects with amphetamine powder itself, traffickers are copying methods used by Latin American drug cartels.

In particular, the more difficult-to-detect liquid cocaine can be used to soak anything from plywood to T-shirts and be retrieved once it reaches its destination.

Captagon is the trade name for a drug that was originally patented in Germany in the early 1960s. It contains an amphetamine-type stimulant called fenethylline, which is used to treat attention deficits and insomnia. drooling, among other diseases.

The drug was later banned and became an illegal substance almost exclusively produced and consumed in the Middle East, and is close to what other countries call “speed”.

Most of the global production of Captagon originates in Syria, fueling a multibillion-dollar industry that has made the drug the country’s biggest export by far.

The Syrian government has been accused of being involved in the Captagon trade.

Saudi Arabia is the largest market for Captagon, an all-purpose drug popular among partygoers but also used for weight loss and by students experiencing academic stress and working professionals. is doing a lot of work.

Around 250 million Captagon pills were seized worldwide in the first eight months of 2022, according to AFP.

The value of Captagon retail trade in the Middle East and Mediterranean is estimated to reach $5.7 billion by 2021, according to the New Lines Research Institute.





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