The Iraqi Crisis on Captagon and Synthetic Drugs by Alfredo Bosco

Drug trafficking within and through Iraq has escalated in recent years. Drug sales and distribution have predominantly occurred in impoverished areas of the main cities and the southern regions, prompting stringent measures by the Iraqi authorities to curtail their proliferation. This emergency is caused primarily by the traffic of two synthetic drugs: captagon and crystal meth. The first is produced in Syria, and the country now makes billions of dollars from the production and trafficking of captagon, while Iraqi authorities claim that crystal meth is coming from laboratories in Iran. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in 2024 14,000 drug suspects were arrested across the country; meth seizures increased almost sixfold between 2019 and 2023; and captagon seizures reportedly tripled between 2022 and 2023.