Is the Netherlands becoming a narco-state?
bbc.com
bbc.com
Also the police doesn't prioritize handling this. I heard that accross one police station taxis would stop, get somebody in the cart, drive 100m, and then the person gets out. The police knew that drugs was being dealed here, but they didnt prioritize dealing with that. I don;t know exactly why.
Also: In the evening/night, in Amsterdam city centry, you can see certain guys wandering around: They are drugs dealers, everybody who know how to recognize them will see them popup everywhere. Including the police.
But as long as the police doesn't SEE them dealing the drugs, they cant do anything.
That including tall the XTC producing labs in the south of holland, and the perfect infrastructure, big harbours make the Netherlands an ideal breeding ground for big drugs networks.
To be honest, i think we should legalize more, and accept that there is a market for it. Yes i'm dutch too :-)
Just out of curiosity, what are the tells for a drug dealer in Amsterdam? Asking for a friend.
I was there just recently and you practically need to push them away. Even when I got an uber back to the hotel the driver tried to sell me weed, some kind of gas canisters with laughing gas or something, and a handful other similar shit.
Before you scream: "Racist!"
I'm black (African, to be precise). I'm describing my experience in several places in Germany (where I live), Prague, and Amsterdam. I trade nods (of acknowledgement) with them and sometimes stop to speak with the Africans who speak my type of pidgin English.
Legit great stuff 10/10, keep it coming boys.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
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The real reason is the high profile violent murders of witnesses, lawyers, etc. associated with trials of high profile criminals with Moroccan roots. This particular minority has been the focus of populist politicians for decades because of the much higher crime rates in that community (compared to other minorities). Murders and assassinations are of course not specific to that minority. Recently, re-convicted Willem Holleder (famous for his part in kidnapping Freddie Heineken in the eighties) is basically in jail for ordering the liquidation of several of his criminal partners. Unlike his Moroccon colleagues he's somewhat of a celebrity and has been for decades.
In any case drug production and export is of course illegal but not considered much of a problem as long as people don't go about machine gunning each other down. I'm not a user of any of this stuff but if other people want to take some pills, smoke some weed, or snort some cocaine that's fine with me. I doubt it's very good for you but most people doing this seem to not end up being homeless drug addicts. The ones that do tend to have psychological issues. Decriminalizing them seems like a humane thing to do. In any case, legalizing this stuff so people don't have to engage with and enrich hardcore criminals would probably be a good thing. Like it or not, this is a multi billion dollar business and it's not going away.
We are a very large producer (the largest?) and the stuff is not harmful enough to warrant the prohibition and all of the crime it entails.
“Our findings suggest that even a first low cumulative dose of Ecstasy is associated with decline in verbal memory. Although the performance of the group of incident Ecstasy users is still within the normal range and the immediate clinical relevance of the observed deficits is limited, long-term negative consequences cannot be excluded.“
I’m curious to see if there are, or have been any studies in the long term effects?
“Some people taking MDMA have died following severe overheating and other medical emergencies. Deaths following the use of MDMA usually involve high doses and/or the simultaneous use of other substances. MDMA overdoses and drug combinations can also cause serotonin syndrome, which can be fatal. MDMA-associated deaths may alternatively involve overcompensation of the risk of dehydration by drinking much too much water, which coupled with the fact that MDMA may stop a person from urinating, causing fatally low concentrations of salt.”
Source: https://drugscience.org.uk/drug-information/mdma/
This website contains a lot of information and is well sourced. All in all, compared to other drugs MDMA is quite safe when taken properly and in proper doses. A lot of deaths come from what people think is MDMA but actually isn’t.
Americans can talk about how harmful fake MDMA is and how you can manage risk better if it's legal. But anyone living in Europe, where there's loads of high quality stuff selling for a few euros per dose, and socialising with other users can easily see the harm it does.
It doesn't really matter how bad it is for you since, at the moment, nothing is stopping you from buying and swallowing as much as you can. The ones who will do harm with it when legalized are the same ones who do it now. The legality of it does not do anything to stop harm from being done.
What I do see is MDMA being more and more accepted as a therapeutic tool, given further studies will confirm what the research has told us until now.
I bet they would have been really happy to become corporate lawyers, highly paid computer programmers or big-4 accountants, but I have a slight feeling those career opportunities were never quite open for them (except for a very lucky few). In other words, if you only provide a "life of crime" as a way of getting out of poverty you can be sure that there be will lots and lots of people choosing that. And who can blame them?
> Supergrass is a British slang term for an informant who turns Queen's evidence, often in return for protection and immunity from prosecution. In the British criminal world, police informants have been called "grasses" since the late 1930s, and the "super" prefix was coined by journalists in the early 1970s to describe those who witnessed against fellow criminals in a series of high-profile mass trials at the time
Thing may not be as violent as in Britain, but the country is on course for it, mainly due to drug related criminal activity. Some newspapers, even the justice minister recently, theorize that the lack of experience of Police in dealing with major crime is just not well developed in general, which together with a generally relaxed attitude and a central and well connected location in Europe (port of Rotterdam, airport of Amsterdam) make the country an ideal place to conduct such drug-business in relative quiet.
I mean... that happened once.
This all is unprecedented.
[1] https://www.advocatenorde.nl/nieuws/contactpunt-beroepsgroep...
Either way, this is terrifying and would have never expected this in the Netherlands.
The scary thing is that the Netherlands basically doesnt have major crimes units. There a good forensics bureau, which is also under heavy strain [2], and a small department at the National Police. That makes is trivial for hardened criminals to stay under the radar: there is (almost) no radar.
[1] https://www.parool.nl/nieuws/tijdlijn-de-vete-in-de-marokkaa... [2] https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2018/07/13/nfi-onderzocht-wegens-v...
Is this something that concerns people around you? Is it like a major shock to everybody?
There is a sort of reinforcing feedback loop to preferring to pretend all is well: to most people things of course are usually well and if everyone thinks all is well most people will behave well. But if you're one of the unlucky ones affected by such issues, you'll find it very difficult to convince people, after all, all is well.
Even though I am outraged by what is happening, I can't help but feel that something is happening to tackle this. The Netherlands is a very sane place, after all, and I'd like to think that whoever can do something about this is doing something about it.
Things are on course to become worse, at this time. Carefully some people start to suggest we need Italian-style investments to be able to track, uncover and handle this level and amount of crime, but we are nowhere near understanding or funding that. There is just no expertise, and no(t much) electoral pressure to fund it. Half of our 'sanity' is simply looking away from problems and hoping they pass of their own accord. That works sometimes, but here I'm not getting my hopes up.