Lebanese Army Seizes 1.2 Million Captagon Pills Destined for Export

The Lebanese army announced on Tuesday that it had seized approximately 1.2 million captagon pills intended for smuggling out of the country. The operation took place in an area north of Beirut, where two individuals were apprehended while packing the narcotics into a vehicle.

Lebanon has been under significant pressure from Gulf states, major markets for the amphetamine-like drug captagon, to curb its production and trafficking. The conservative monarchies have been particularly vocal in their concerns.

Captagon has been a significant source of illicit funding in Syria since the civil war erupted in 2011, with the former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's government heavily reliant on it as an export. Since Assad's fall in 2024, the new authorities in Damascus have been attempting to combat the captagon trade, while both Syria and Lebanon grapple with controlling smuggling across their porous 330-kilometer border.

Hezbollah, an ally of Assad in Lebanon, has also faced accusations of financing its operations through the captagon trade. The synthetic drug has proliferated throughout the region, leading neighboring countries to frequently report seizures and urge Lebanon and Syria to intensify their anti-trafficking efforts.

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two individuals... while they were packing approximately 1.2 million captagon pills into a vehicle for smuggling out of Lebanon