House advances Hill-led legislation to counter Assad regime’s drug trafficking in Syria

The U.S. House of Representatives on Sept. 20 passed bipartisan legislation offered by U.S. Rep. French Hill (R-AR) that seeks to end the drug trade and narcotics production and trafficking in Syria being led by a terrorist regime.

The House approved the Countering Assad’s Proliferation Trafficking And Garnering Of Narcotics (CAPTAGON) Act, H.R. 6265, which Rep. Hill sponsored in December 2021 with lead original cosponsor U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA).

If enacted, H.R. 6265 would require the United States government to develop a strategy “to disrupt and dismantle” the Captagon trade and narcotics networks of the terrorist Syrian regime headed by President Bashar al-Assad, according to the text of the bill.  

Earlier this summer, after the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee approved H.R. 6265, Rep. Hill pointed out that such drugs not only cripple local populations, they also serve to finance the Assad regime and Iran-backed groups in the region.

“The U.S. government must do all it can to disrupt the industrial-level drug production currently taking place in Syria,” said the congressman.

Ahead of House passage on Tuesday, Rep. Hill spoke on the House floor in support of his bill, saying that in addition to regularly committing war crimes against their own people, the Assad regime in Syria “is now becoming a narco-state.”

“The current epicenter of the drug trade is in territory controlled by the Assad regime,” the lawmaker said. “Yet despite that, just last week the State Department and White House failed to include Syria in their required determinations of Major Drug Transit and Major Illicit Drug Producing Countries.”

Rep. Hill also noted that Captagon has already reached Europe. 

“It is only a matter of time until it reaches our shores,” he said. “If we do not work with our like-minded partners to first hinder the narcotics trade and replace it with a working system of institutions that serve the Syrian people, then Assad will add the title “Drug Kingpin” to his recognized global status as a leading mass murderer.”

H.R. 6265 now advances to the U.S. Senate for consideration.