Captagon

[Foreign ministers from Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt met in Amman on May 1 to discuss a solution to the Syrian conflict © Mohammad Ali/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock]

I read this morning at reference 1 that Syria, having been expelled from the Arab League in 2011, looks to be on the way back in. The present view seeming to be that peace and prosperity in the Arab world would be better served by their being inside the tent than outside.

The other members do not want to make too much of human rights abuses in Syria, their own records in that department not being very good. But they do care about Syria having become a narco state, majoring on the production and export of a new-to-me drug called Captagon, a highly addictive variety of amphetamine, widely abused in the Middle East. A quick skim of reference 2 suggests that huge amounts of the stuff have been seized by customs officials and others in the eastern Mediterranean over the past ten years or so.

So they might be terribly holy, but they are clearly exposed to at least some of the perils of the western world.

PS 1: I sometimes wonder about the prevalence of mental disorder in Saudi Arabia. One might have thought it was a sitting duck: a very rich country which is socially very conservative, not to say old-fashioned, and which has grown from less than 5 million people a hundred years ago to near 40 million now. There must be lots of stresses and strains. Not to mention those brought on by excessive heat.

PS 2: perhaps Mohammad Ali is a common enough name in the Arab world, more than the assumed name of a famous boxer from the US. In any event, there is an Iranian photographer/photojournalist called Mohammad Ali Berno. Not an Arab, but not that far away.

References

Reference 1: Arab world weighs price for Assad’s rehabilitation: Diplomats say Syria’s pariah leader will be expected to make concessions to enable his return to Arab League - Raya Jalabi, Andrew, Samer Al-Atrush, Financial Times - 2023.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_League.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenethylline.

Reference 4: https://www.dea.gov/. Search finds just reference 4 for 'captagon' and 'fenethylline'. Does not appear to be important to the DEA.

Reference 5: Drugs of Abuse: A DEA resource guide - Drug Enforcement Administration, US Department of Justice - 2020. A well produced guide to abusable substance control in the US.

Reference 6: https://www.fda.gov/. Search finds neither 'captagon' nor 'fenethylline'.