Breaking Brabant: Drug labs blight a Dutch landscape
The Netherlands is one of the world’s largest producers of ecstasy and amphetamines
Monday, July 22, 2019
North Brabant is Europe's biggest producer of synthetic drugs, such as ecstasy and amphetamine. In 2017, 21 active ecstasy laboratories were dismantled in the EU, up from 11 in 2016 — and all of them were in the Netherlands, according to a report released by the EU drugs agency in June. Local government experts estimate the annual volume of waste from illicit drug production is about 255,000 kg per year. Most of it is dumped in the countryside, resulting in 109 reported findings in 2018, up from 83 in 2017. "It's a very complex issue, but we must seek to regulate this type of drugs on an EU-level in a different way," says Maarten Groothuizen, MP and justice spokesman for the D66 party, hinting at the Dutch gedoogbeleid (“tolerance policy”) that's already in place for the sale of cannabis in coffee shops.
