A new drug of choice in the Gulf

THE traditional way is not always the most successful. Saudi Arabian border guards this month arrested a Sudanese man accused of smuggling more than half a million drug tablets into the kingdom from Jordan on the back of a camel. Just as tastes in food and drink vary from region to region, so do preferences for drugs. The one the Sudanese man was allegedly trafficking, known as Captagon, is the Arabian peninsula’s most popular narcotic. True Captagon (generic name: fenethylline) was produced as a treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. America banned it in 1981 after its addictive and other pernicious characteristics became clear. Most other countries have followed suit.

The pills flooding into Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states sometimes have a fenethylline base. But many are simply ‘uppers’, or amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS), and some of what is sold under the poetic street name of Abu Hilalain (Father of the Two Crescent Moons: an allusion to the...Continue reading

Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2u54NFc

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