Lebanon seizes 800,000 pills in major drug bust

Lebanese police said Saturday (April 13th) they have seized more than 800,000 pills of the amphetamine-type stimulant Captagon, worth around $12 million, in a bust co-ordinated with Saudi authorities, AFP reported.

Police stopped a refrigerated truck containing 142 kilogrammes of the illicit drug on April 9th, according to a statement.

The bust came after Saudi Arabia's Directorate of Narcotics Control tipped off Lebanese authorities of a plan to smuggle a large Captagon shipment to an unidentified "Arab country" by land, the police statement said.

Lebanon has previously stopped several shipments of Captagon to Gulf states.

Captagon is classified by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime as an "amphetamine-type stimulant".

Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria are usually assumed to be transit or production territories for illicit Captagon, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.

Lebanese authorities have been clamping down on exports of the drug, produced in territory where government oversight is lax or non-existent.

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