November 15, 2020

Scooter rider misbehaves in Rotterdam, gets jailed in Italy

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 3:41 pm

On 14 November a woman decided to drive over the sidewalk in Rotterdam with her scooter, ending up ramming an automatic teller. As luck would have it, she got caught by the police.

Then, she wasn’t able to produce a driver’s licence for the scooter or identify herself, as she didn’t have any ID on her. In the Netherlands everyone over 14 year of age is obliged to identify themselves if the police asks.

When the cops figured out who she was, they also found out that she was supposed to be doing three years of jail time in Italy for a drug-related crime.

The moral of the story: don’t try and get caught if you’re trying to avoid getting caught.

(Link: ad.nl, Photo by Facemepls, some rights reserved)

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May 18, 2020

Dutch switch from ecstasy to meth with Mexican help

Filed under: General,Health by Orangemaster @ 11:57 am

According to the Telegraaf newspaper, The Netherlands is producing a whole lot more crystal meth these days. The news reads like a Netflix series: Dutch drug traffickers are working with Mexican cartels to replace ecstasy labs with crystal meth ones because it’s more of a moneymaker and easier for the Dutch. The article goes on to say that the Dutch have the hardware, and the Mexicans, the recipes.

Funny, that’s exactly how I feel about Mexican restaurants in Amsterdam.

“The Netherlands is an attractive location given its good infrastructure, production facilities, and relatively mild prison sentences.” The country does have a reputation for being soft on drugs. However, crystal meth labs are being discovered and shut down, with busts worth up to 10 million euro. Last year a floating meth lab in Moerdijk was shut down.

(Links: nltimes.nl, Photo: DEA)

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October 26, 2019

The Netherlands still a major drug hub

Filed under: Health by Orangemaster @ 11:09 am

According to a study published this week, The Netherlands makes the top of the list for the highest rate of MDMA (aka x, xtc, ecstasy and molly) use. The study is the ‘largest wastewater based epidemiology study ever performed in terms of cities (120) and countries (37) involved and of the monitoring duration (2011–17).’ Scientists from around the world sampled wastewater for drug residue, which is said to be an increasingly popular method to track patterns in the global illicit drug market over the past decade.

Different places have different favourites as well. Results showed that overall drug use was most prevalent cities such as Antwerp, Amsterdam, Zurich, London, and Barcelona, while cities in Greece, Portugal, Finland, Poland, and Sweden had the lowest rates of drug residue in wastewater. I bet the latter drink instead, but that’s an uneducated guess. And there’s no denying that people do come to Amsterdam to do drugs despite any city marketing spin to the contrary.

Cocaine was most popular in London, Bristol, Amsterdam, Zurich, Geneva, St Gallen, and Antwerp. While the Netherlands had the highest rates of MDMA use, the drug was also popular in Helsinki, Oslo, Brussels, Dortmund, Zagreb, Zurich, Geneva, and Barcelona.

Not only is the use of MDMA a public health issue, the amount of chemical dumping that apparently goes on in Noord-Brabant is terrible for the environment. Basically, anybody taking MDMA is also indirectly contributing to this problem. The study also states that MDMA use was big in Eindhoven, Utrecht and Amsterdam.

More background on why the Netherlands is a drug hub:

‘The Netherlands is the cocaine hub of Europe’

Dutch cities do well as drug capitals

(Link: vice.com, Photo: DEA)

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June 8, 2019

Amsterdam to get a drugs museum

Filed under: Dutch first,General,Health by Orangemaster @ 8:46 pm

Poppi is slated to be the first-ever drugs museum of The Netherlands in Amsterdam.

According to the founders, the country does not have a public institution which offers low-threshold education on drug policy and addiction. Misconceptions about drugs are widespread, and the story of drugs is not black and white.

Poppi plans to engage visitors and inform them from different perspectives. They want people to form an opinion about drugs based on knowledge and facts, and not just on emotions as is often the case.

For anyone in Amsterdam this month, you can find out more Poppi and donate all while having drinks at www.denieuweanita.nl on June 16 where Poppi will be presenting its project.

Find out more about Poppi in this video:

(Link: poppi.amsterdam, Photo: DEA)

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March 21, 2019

Dutch family caught with 3300 kilos of coke

Filed under: Animals,General by Orangemaster @ 3:38 pm

A Dutch father and his two sons living in Spain and Germany were caught by the police with a staggering 3300 kilos of cocaine back in 2017. They gave themselves up and are now in prison in the Netherlands, and I guess now the press can talk about it.

The cocaine, which was found in Hazeldonk near Breda, Noord Brabant, known as an important corridor between the Netherlands and Belgium, was hidden in a shipment of bananas from South America that was to be transported from Antwerp to the Netherlands.

Back in 2017, the owners of the transport company and the driver were arrested and a police team starting investigating to find out who was behind the smuggle. They did as you do and followed the money, and found villas, cash and expensive cars.

And because of a rough news week in the Netherlands with a terrible shooting and a racist party getting more leverage in the Dutch senate after yesterday’s elections, here’s a short video of a goat riding a sheep that I know I needed to watch.

(Link: nos.nl, Photo of wilted tulip by Graham Keen, some rights reserved)

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December 3, 2018

Girl tells on daddy’s green plants

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 1:25 pm

Not long after a goose pointed the cops to a big drugs lab, a young girl got her father into trouble while talking about his extra curricular activities at school.

A man and father from Hengelo, Overijssel was sentenced to 80 hours of community service for illegally growing cannabis. “My dad has green plants in the attic”, the girl said. There was 450 odd plants in said attic, which is 445 more than usually allowed. Daddy was cultivating cannabis to make some much needed extra money due to circumstances, including mommy moving out and his car breaking down.

He used legal equipment bought at the DIY store and legal electricity, which isn’t standard fare. And he didn’t get high on his own supply, but he still got busted.

The moral of this story: maybe let your kid talk about what mommy does on career day even if she might be a housewife, it’s safer.

(Link: nltimes.nl)

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November 28, 2018

Goose’s honking betrays huge XTC lab

Filed under: Animals,General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 2:40 pm
geese02.jpg

In the village of Sint Willebrord, North Brabant, people were illegally producing XTC in a large lab in some warehouse, making barrels of cash while keeping their activities on the down low.

Then, one day the cops came knocking on the lab door because they heard a goose honking like the end of the world was coming, on the train tracks near their secret lab.

The goose was a regular at the neighbour’s property, but possibly didn’t like the weird noises it heard and when it heard them, started honking like crazy, waking up the neighbour in the middle of the night. The neighbour then woke up to see a suspicious van making several runs in the night, put two and two together and figured out drugs were being produced.

The neighbour then told the police what she saw, and that’s when the cops went to check it all out.

The cops arrested the 70-year-old owner who claimed to know nothing, saying he rented the warehouse to some guys who paid him cash up front and refused to let him see what they were doing. The owner’s lawyer attacked the woman’s claim, saying ‘she honks as loud as the goose does’, but stick and stones, the man is looking at three years in prison.

The cops had a good day, seizing 1.2 million euro worth of raw materials for producing XTC pills. They said the whole place smelled of anise, a characteristic smell of synthetic drugs. The theory is that the goose wasn’t honking over noise, but about the smell of anise, which attracted it, if we believe the Internet. And since the drugs were made at night, the smell was then at its strongest.

The moral of this story is that the cops were not sent on a wild goose chase.

(Link: vice.com)

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November 24, 2017

First Belgian-Dutch series to hit Netflix

Filed under: Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 11:36 am

The first Belgian-Dutch co-production ‘Undercover’, a 10-part series, is set to hit Netflix in 2019, and it stars Anna Drijver (Dutch), Frank Lammers (Dutch), Elise Schaap (Dutch) and Tom Waes (Belgian), produced by Jan Theys (Belgian), with writer and showrunner Nico Moolenaar (Dutch) and directed by Eshref Reybrouck (Belgian) and Frank Devos (Belgian).

For those of you who have watched the Netflix series ‘Narcos’, an American series about the cocaine trade in Colombia, consider this its European ecstasy cousin, but then set in the Netherlands and Belgium. Not a week goes by in the Netherlands and possibly Belgium without a news item about drums of chemicals used to make ecstasy (aka MDMA) found dumped in woods in the province of Noord-Brabant, so someone might as well make a series about it.

“I found it incredible to learn that the Netherlands and Belgium are such a huge part of the global drug trafficking network”, said producer Jan Theys. As for cocaine, the Netherlands remains the ‘Colombia of Western Europe’ and used to be the best and biggest cocaine producing country in the world until WWII.

(Link: broadwayworld.com, Photo: DEA)

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April 15, 2017

‘The Netherlands is the cocaine hub of Europe’

Filed under: Film,Health,History by Orangemaster @ 11:59 am

A recent Dutch report on organised crime has pointed out a troubling increase in cocaine coming into the Netherlands from South America, and has even referred to the country as ‘the Colombia of Western Europe’. As well, Europol has reported a major increase in the online sale of drugs from Dutch sources.

According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, in 2016 cocaine was the third most popular ‘ever used’ drug, with lifetime prevalence (proportion of a population have used cocaine) of 5.1%. We’ll see what the EMCDDA has to say in June as well.

And then there’s always the fascinating historical fact that until WWII the Netherlands was the best and biggest cocaine producing country in the world, all backed by the Dutch Royal Bank.

(Link: nhnieuws.nl, Photo of wilted tulip by Graham Keen, some rights reserved)

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March 29, 2017

Laughing gas is a thing in the Netherlands

Filed under: General,Health by Orangemaster @ 11:50 am

Laughing gas-FB

I’m sure we’re a bit late on the scene, but after tripping on so many empty cartridges of nitrous oxide aka laughing gas, it was time to find out what the fuss was all about.

For starters, there is a difference between nitrous oxide used as an anaesthetic for medical uses, like when I had my wisdom teeth pulled out, and the nitrous oxide for recreational use, according to a Dutch website on drugs. The latter is not mixed with oxygen and is meant for industrial use, which means it does not have to meet the requirements for recreational use and is relatively stronger.

Laughing gas is usually inhaled after filling a balloon with it and its effects are immediate, making it popular with young people. I wonder how parents are dealing with it. Since July 2016 laughing gas falls under the Commodities Act instead of the Medicines Act, making it easily and legally available, even on Facebook (see screenshot). Of course there are risks involved with inhaling too much of it, doing it too often or doing using it incorrectly that would permanently mess up your brain, but it’s legal and popular, and the Dutch government is apparently not too worried.

If only users could pick up after themselves, as I see tons of these cartridges littering the streets of Amsterdam. Parents, you could at least remind your kids to pick up after themselves.

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