[imagesource: here]

Paper seems harmless enough, right?

That must have been the thinking behind the use of industrial paper cylinders to smuggle more drugs than I would think a country could consume in a year.

The smugglers in this case, however, slipped up by trying to move too much, too quickly.

Yesterday, Italian police seized a record-breaking 15 tonnes of amphetamines worth $1,12 billion at the Italian port of Salerno.

CNN is describing it as the “largest drug haul in the world in terms of both value and quantity”.

Investigators found the shipment by tracking three suspect containers, the Guardia di Finanza financial police said in a statement.

Commander Domenico Napolitano says that the drugs were so well hidden that scanners at the port didn’t pick them up.

“We weren’t able to see them but we knew it was arriving because of our ongoing investigations we have with the Camorra (Italian organized crime group),” he said.

“We intercepted phone calls and members, so we knew what to expect.”

The Camorra bring the drugs to Italy and take a cut for helping to distribute them, Napolitano added.

The pills were marked with the ‘Captagon’ logo which apparently “distinguishes the drug of Jihad”.

“It is known that ISIS/Daesh finances its terrorist activities in large part with the trafficking of synthetic drugs produced largely in Syria, which has become the leading world producer of amphetamines in recent years,” police said.

Take a minute to fully appreciate the sheer quantity of the drugs seized in these videos from The Guardian and Euronews:

They seem to be endless:

The US Drug Enforcement Administration says that ISIS makes wide use of these particular drugs across territories where it controls its sale.

The group is also able to easily produce large quantities of synthetic drugs to sell on global markets, raising huge amounts of money, added police.

Police believe that the drugs were headed to Europe, where they would be distributed by various organised crime groups.

“The hypothesis is that during the lockdown, due to the global epidemiological emergency, the production and distribution of synthetic drugs in Europe has practically stopped and therefore many traffickers with different organized crime groups have turned to Syria, where it does not seem to have slowed down,” police said.

Drug suppliers don’t usually move product in such large quantities because it’s too risky (evidently).

Captagon was originally the brand name for a medicinal product containing the synthetic stimulant fenethylline. It is no longer produced or used, but drugs carrying the Captagon name are regularly seized in the Middle East, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA).

The synthesised Captagon tablets seized contain amphetamine as well as other chemicals.

Somebody, somewhere, is going to be mightily upset about their product ending up in an evidence locker.

[source:cnn]