DOHA: The Air Freight division of the General Directorate of Customs foiled an attempt to smuggle large quantities of banned Captagon pills into Qatar.
The pills were concealed in a shipment of tablets. Customs authorities seized a total of 34,990 pills.
Captagon keeps users awake for long periods of time, dulls pain and creates a sense of euphoria and can lead to hallucinations. Invented in Germany in the 1960s to treat attention and sleep disorders, and highly addictive, Captagon was banned throughout most of the world in the 1980s.
Captagon is a psychostimulant which is made of a combination of amphetamine and theophyllin and one of the brand names of a group of drugs known as Fenethylline.