vRIYADH (CNN) – A grisly drug-induced homicide captivated the media in Saudi Arabia this April, when a man in the country set his family house on fire. Four members of his family were killed.
Police said he was under the influence of shabu, a methamphetamine, according to local papers.
Saudi media has been sounding the alarm lately over the rise in drug use.
On Wednesday, Saudi authorities announced the largest seizure of illicit drugs in the country’s history after nearly 47 million amphetamine pills were hidden in a flour shipment and seized at a warehouse in the capital Riyadh.
The record seizure demonstrates what experts say is Saudi Arabia’s growing role as the drug capital of the Middle East, driving demand.
The kingdom, they say, is one of the largest and most lucrative places for consumption of drugs, and that status is only intensifying.
Wednesday’s operation was the biggest single smuggling attempt in terms of narcotics seized, according to the General Directorate of Narcotics Control. While authorities didn’t name the drug seized or where it came from, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has previously said that “reports of amphetamine seizures from countries in the Middle East continue to refer predominantly to tablets bearing the Captagon logo.”
Captagon was originally the brand name for a medicinal product containing the synthetic stimulant fenethylline. Though it is no longer produced legally, counterfeit drugs carrying the captagon name are regularly seized in the Middle East, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.
Drug busts of captagon in Saudi Arabia have grown over time.
The drug was popularized in the kingdom some 15 years ago but has taken off more intensely in the past five years, “perhaps becoming on par with cannabis,” according to Vanda Felbab-Brown, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, who has written on the topic.
One of the reasons captagon is spreading in use is “because there is a supply flood now”.
Saudi Arabia’s Center for International Communication didn’t respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Captagon can be sold for between $10 and $25 a pill, meaning the latest Saudi haul, if it was the same drug, has a street value of up to $1.1 billion, based on figures from the International Addiction Review journal.