Many of the factories are small, in metal hangars or empty villas, where workers combine the chemicals with mixers and press them into pills with simple machines, according to two Syrians who have visited them. Syria had the needed components: experts to mix drugs, factories to make products to conceal the pills, access to Mediterranean shipping lanes and established smuggling routes to Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq.Ĭaptagon labs are scattered across government-held parts of Syria, according to Syrians in areas where the drugs are produced - in territory controlled by Hezbollah near the Lebanese border outside the capital, Damascus and around the port city of Latakia. Enterprising Syrians, working with local pharmacists and machinery from disused pharmaceutical factories, began making it. Cheap versions retail for less than a dollar a pill in Syria, while higher quality pills can sell for $14 or more apiece in Saudi Arabia.Īfter the Syrian war broke out, smugglers took advantage of the chaos to sell the drug to fighters on all sides, who took it to bolster their courage in battle. While the pharmaceutical Captagon contained the amphetamine fenethylline, the illicit version sold today, often referred to as “captagon” with a lowercase c, usually contains a mix of amphetamines, caffeine and various fillers. But to continue feeding the gulf market, illicit captagon production took off, including in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, a hub of hashish production and a stronghold of Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group that is now part of Lebanon’s government. Its white pills were stamped with two crescents, giving it the Arabic nickname “abu hilalain,” or “the one with two moons.”Īfter it was found to be addictive, it was banned internationally in the late 1980s.

Legal amphetamine