Syria and the Captagon Trade: What Now? with Gregg Roman | MEF Podcast Ep. #345

Captagon, a highly addictive amphetamine-style stimulant, has ravaged the Middle East in recent years. The fall of Bashar al-Assad revealed Syria's role as the global epicenter of Captagon production, a $10 billion-a-year drug trade that sustained the Assad regime’s grip on power and fueled its war economy. Production facilities have been uncovered even in air bases. The industrial-level production facilities and smuggling networks disbursed billions of capsules per year. How will criminal networks respond to the disruption? Will the new Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham authorities eradicate this operation or continue it? What policies should the U.S. and allied governments adopt?

Gregg Roman is director of the Middle East Forum. In 2014, he was named one of the ten most inspiring global Jewish leaders by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He has written for the Hill, the Forward, the Albany Times-Union, and other publications. He attended American University in Washington, D.C., and the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel.