US act aims to end illicit Captagon trade in Syria

"The Captagon Republic" or "The Drug State"; is how some foreign newspapers described the Syrian state.

According to several foreign publications, Syria relies on drug trade and its export to Arab and European countries as a primary source of financing for the Syrian regime, its president Bashar al-Assad, and his brother Maher al-Assad, as well as compensation for losses resulting from international sanctions imposed on the country.

The US moved to confront the drug trade in Syria after US President Joe Biden signed the US defense budget for 2023, which was submitted by Congress and included a law to combat Captagon.

The draft law stated that the drug trade associated with the Assad regime is considered a transient security threat, so the Ministries of Defense, State, and Treasury, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Office of National Intelligence, and other federal agencies will be asked to present a strategy to Congress to disrupt drug production in Syria within a maximum period of one hundred and eighty and 180 days, according to several items including:

Targeting, disrupting, and weakening Assad's networks that directly or indirectly support the drug manufacturing process.

Organizing a public information campaign to raise awareness about the extent to which this system is linked to the drug trade.

Using global diplomatic relations linked to the campaign of economic pressure on the Syrian regime to target its drug-related infrastructure.

So, this procedure is still in its early stages, but will the American Captagon act eventually succeed in stopping the illicit trade in Syria?