This week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill requiring the federal government to develop an interagency strategy to disrupt and dismantle narcotics production and trafficking linked to the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.
The bill — Countering Assad’s Proliferation Trafficking and Garnering of Narcotics (CAPTAGON) Act (H.R. 6265) — was sponsored by Reps. French Hill (R-AR) and Brendan Boyle’s (D-PA).
“In addition to regularly committing war crimes against his own people, the Assad-regime in Syria is now becoming a Narco-State,” Hill said recently on the House floor. “The current epicenter of the drug trade is in territory controlled by the Assad regime. Yet despite that, just last week, the State Department and White House failed to include Syria in their required determinations of Major Drug Transit and Major Illicit Drug Producing Countries. Captagon has already reached Europe, and it is only a matter of time until it reaches our shores. If we do not work with our like-minded partners to first hinder the narcotics trade and replace it with a working system of institutions that serve the Syrian people, then Assad will add the title “Drug Kingpin” to his recognized global status as a leading mass murderer.”
The bill was included in the House-passed version of the FY 2023 NDAA on July 14. On July 29, the bill passed out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.