Syria's lucrative drug becomes a bargaining tool.

Syria's production of the highly addictive drug Captagon, which has become the center of an increasing number of drug busts across the Middle East, may be used as a bargaining chip as it tries to normalize ties with neighboring states. The drug helped Syria turn into a narco-state after much of the international community cut off its economy due to its brutal crackdown on an uprising in 2011. The growth of the industry has raised alarms in the international community, with the US introducing the 2022 US Captagon Act, which linked the trade to the Syrian regime and called it a "transnational security threat."