As the country makes efforts to reverse Saudi Arabia’s ban of fruit and vegetable imports from Lebanon, a report was released revealing just how serious drug trafficking through produce really is.
The Saudi ambassador to Lebanon, Waleed Bukhari, explained that from early 2020 up until April 2021, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia seized 57,184,900 narcotic pills from Lebanon. These pills arrived in KSA hidden in different types of produce, Bukhari outlined recently.
While the export of fruits and vegetables to Arab Gulf countries makes Lebanon around $55 million a year, it’s a fraction compared to what is generated from drug trafficking.
According to UNODC’s Illicit Synthetic Drug Expert, Martin Raithelhuber, the street value price of Captagon pills in Arab Gulf countries ranges between $10 to $20 per pill.
Assuming that the amphetamine pills were all Captagon, drug traffickers in Lebanon could have made anywhere between $571 million to a whopping $1.1 billion smuggling to Saudi Arabia in the past year alone.
These numbers are just a portion of what drug traffickers in Lebanon are making when they successfully smuggle various types of illicit drugs across the region, including hashish.
Just yesterday, a Lebanese-Brazilian national was arrested at the airport for attempting to smuggle nearly a dozen kilograms of cocaine into the country.
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