“More than 6,000 captagon pills were seized in the form of 30 bags with more than 200 pills per bag inside, and the drugs belonged to a drug dealer in the area,” the directorate said in a statement.
Captagon is an amphetamine-type stimulant which has been spreading across the Middle East, with Syria as the main supplier and Saudi Arabia as the primary consumer.
The drugs were seized amid an operation by the intelligence directorate and anti-drug forces in the Rutba district of Anbar.
In mid-July, Iraq’s Rapid Response Forces and the General Directorate of Narcotics Control carried out what was labeled as the country’s first seizure of a captagon laboratory in Muthanna province.
A week prior, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani ordered the establishment of rehabilitation centers in all Iraqi provinces, excluding the Kurdistan Region, as part of his cabinet’s commitment to combat growing drug trade and use as seriously as the country fights terrorism.
Last month, Iraqi security forces said they had seized one million captagon pills in the possession of a foreign drug dealer in the capital Baghdad.
Around 15,000 people were arrested on drug-related charges in Iraq in 2022 and more than 400 kilograms of narcotics were confiscated, according to figures from the General Directorate of Narcotics Control in the interior ministry.
Around 250,000 captagon pills were seized from a school under renovation in Anbar province in late June.
