Saudi - Drug Capital of the ME

Wasn't aware but it seems that meth has taken over the ME. Syria is producing and KSA seems to be distribution hub. Will this reshape ME pilitics?

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/20/us-will-again-offer-free-at-home-covid-tests-starting-monday.html

The record seizure demonstrates what experts say is Saudi Arabia’s growing role as the drug capital of the Middle East, driving demand and becoming the primary destination for [COLOR=var(--theme-paragraph__link-color)]smugglers from Syria and Lebanon.[/COLOR]
The kingdom, they say, is one of the largest and most lucrative regional destinations for drugs, and that status is only intensifying.

Dubai police seize over $1 billion of captagon drug smuggled inside furniture | CNN

Captagon was originally the brand name for a medicinal product containing the synthetic stimulant fenethylline. Though it is no longer produced legally, counterfeit drugs carrying the captagon name are regularly seized in the Middle East, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.
Experts say the vast majority of global captagon production occurs in Syria, with the Gulf region being its primary destination.
The growth of the industry has raised alarms in the international community. Last year, the US introduced the 2022 US Captagon Act, which linked the trade to the Syrian regime and called it a “transnational security threat.”

 

Global economy is so intertwined isolationism just isn't an option anymore.

 

If convicted. But if the pushers are the princes relying on keeping the migrant workforce placated and controlled, whose to say how enforcement is applied? Put em in slum camps, get em addicted, feed the addiction and use it to maintain control?

 

And the truly religious leaders see it as a scurge upon their nation as the unemployed youth with citizenship dividends seem to like it too. How does that get difference of opinion get rectified?

 

Not so far. EV's have cut demand by about 2M BPD, about the same amount that OPEC cut..EV sales are acceleratinb

 

we have from 3 million barrels per day to over 13 million barrels per day and growing. It is still a global market that our oil gets sold into and that means that the major producers can manipulate the price and it impacts us regardless of how much we produce. All we can do is take market share at market price

 

you mean if the rest of the world didn't use oil or if we nationalized our companies and made exporting it illegal? like isolationism?