In Brief: The Captagon Trade

A lot happens every day. Alliances shift, leaders change, and conflicts erupt. With In Brief, we’ll help you make sense of it all. Each week, experts will dig deep on a single issue happening in the world to help you better understand it. *** In the twelve years since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, the regime of Bashar al Assad has overseen the development of a multi-billion dollar drug empire built on one powerful substance: captagon. Captagon is the moniker for fenethylline hydrochloride, developed in the 1960s as a treatment for attention deficit disorder, narcolepsy, and depression. In