The Booming Business of Captagon
▻http://www.mesp.me/2015/07/09/syrian-crisis-the-booming-business-of-captagon
The new drug epidemic in the Middle East?
Captagon (an amphetamine-type stimulant unknown elsewhere), is mainly consumed by fighters in Syria and by the youth in the wealthy Gulf states, in particular Saudi Arabia, and recently by Syrian refugees in Lebanon. As of 2012, Iranian youth widely replaced opium imported from neighboring Afghanistan, with methamphetamine.
Beside Cannabis, heroin, cocaine, the Middle East, as other regions around the world, reports an increase in the use of a variety of synthetic drugs such as amphetamine-like stimulants (ATS), methamphetamine and the 500 potentially harmful new psychoactive substances (NPS). Unfortunately, even at the international level, we lack accurate data concerning the varieties of NPS available as well as their health threat.