The announcement was made by the SFDA's Consumer Awareness Department fearing that students who desperately prepare for their final examinations look for stimulants — most commonly a counterfeit stimulant pill illegally manufactured and sold in the black market under the brand name Captagon — to avoid sleep in order to concentrate more on their studies.
“Due to the ongoing final-examination season, some students will be busy looking for stimulants like Captagon to overcome sleepiness and fatigue,” said Dr. Abdul Rahman bin Sultan Al-Sultan, a pharmacist in the Consumer Awareness Department of the SFDA.
Captagon pills are widely distributed in the illegal drugs trade in the Middle East.
The drug fenethylline that was once sold as Captagon was used on children with attention deficit disorders before being widely banned.
It was intended to be a substitute for using amphetamine, but the black market counterfeit pill sold illegally today is often made of amphetamines instead of the milder substitute fenethylline.
In other words, taking Captagon pills is a form of amphetamine abuse and heavy use can lead to heart failure, especially mixed with high doses of caffeine, nicotine and especially ephedrine — a compound found in many over-the-counter cough suppressants and diet pills.
Common side effects include a fast heart rate, high blood pressure and excessive sweating.
Users may get agitated to the point of being unusually fidgety and even aggressive. They may also lack appetite.
Users may experience sharp headaches and exhaustion after they stop taking the drug, which may encourage them to continue to abuse the stimulant. At higher doses abusers can have aural and visual hallucinations, psychotic episodes or extreme dysphoria that manifests as paranoia or depression. At very high doses, abusers can suffer heart failure or brain hemorrhages followed by a trip to the emergency room and/or death.
Al-Sultan said that there are several names for these amphetamine pills, such as The White and Abu Malaf.
“Without realizing the side effects of these pills, some students unfortunately use Captagon thinking that it will help them concentrate more and help them break rest to continue their night studies,” he said.
