Inside Assad’s Captagon drug-smuggling empire and how it funded brutal Syrian regime

A Syrian member of the rebel group shows amphetamine pills known as Captagon hidden inside a melon - (AP)

As the dust settles on the fragments of Bashar al-Assad’s collapsed Syrian dictatorship, the truth about a mass drug empire believed to have brought huge profits to the former regime is being uncovered among the ashes.

The Assad family was long accused by Washington and other international actors of profiteering from the production and sale of captagon, an addictive amphetamine-like stimulant which swept across the Middle East and became known as “poor-man’s cocaine”.