It’s been called the poor man’s cocaine.
Captagon: the drug that funded Bashar al-Assad’s brutal rule in Syria.
It’s an amphetamine which – in high doses – induces feelings of euphoria and invulnerability.
Popular with soldiers, they say it offers ‘chemical courage’ and reportedly suppresses pain.
And it’s made the Assad family billions – more than 10 billion dollars a year, by recent estimates. Money it used to shore up a crumbling dynasty.
Filmed and edited by Soren Munk; and produced by Rob Hodge.