WEDNESDAY, 27 DECEMBER 2023 - 09:07

Crystal meth lab busts becoming more common in the Netherlands, police say
Police in the Netherlands took down 120 synthetic drug laboratories during the first 11 months of the year, including 20 used to produce crystal meth. By comparison, Dutch police found 15 crystal meth labs during the same timeframe in both 2021 and 2022, police said in a statement released on Wednesday.

Though highly addictive, crystal meth is not believed to be used by many people in the Netherlands, but it is more widely used elsewhere in Europe. Drug traffickers in the Netherlands are increasingly using the smuggling channels they established to distribute ecstasy as a means for trafficking crystal meth, a police representative told NOS.

The revenue generated by crystal meth sales is also greater, as is the profit margin. "At 7,500 euros per kilo, the wholesale price is four times higher than that of ecstasy," said André van Rijn, a police officer who helps dismantle labs, to NOS. Van Rijn expects investigators will continue to find an increasing number of crystal meth labs as a result.

Police have had to dedicate more resources in the last five years since arresting a Mexican drug trafficker who went by the nickname "Pablo Icecobar," a reference to notorious cocaine trafficker Pablo Escobar and "ice," another street name for crystal meth. He was taken into custody when a drug lab in Moerdijk was found in the spring of 2019. He was convicted by the District Court of Den Bosch this year. He was sentenced to serve nearly 15 years in prison.

The police are now launching a new effort in coordination with the Dutch Forensic Institute (NFI) to help investigate the the source of raw materials, new production processes, and estimates about the amount of synthetic drugs that each lab was able to yield. "When we dismantle drug labs, we almost always find empty barrels with remnants of raw materials. Or we find the raw materials at a location that we can link to the lab,” Van Rijn said in a statement. The NFI will then be tasked with compiling data that can be used in prosecutions.

"Drug trafficking often involves cash and criminals do not always keep auditable accounts. We can then use the NFI information sheets to calculate what has been earned. That is important to know, because then we can take away the criminally earned assets," Van Rijn said.

The additional forensics work is becoming more necessary as drug traffickers figure out new methods to work with different raw materials when supplies to previously used items are cut off or restricted. This leads to new yields in the production process, making it more difficult for investigators to calculate a drug lab's capacity.

"The police and the NFI cannot rely on calculations from surrounding countries,” said Van Rijn. "The Netherlands unfortunately sets trends in this area. Our country is the production leader in the field of drugs."

The police said the Ministry of Justice and Security has made it easier to restrict access to raw materials more rapidly, making it increasingly difficult and complicated for drug traffickers to acquire raw materials. "They have to invent and import new raw materials with which they then have to make the necessary substances for drugs themselves," said Jorrit van den Berg from the NFI.