Dutch companies imported €2 billion worth of dangerous designer drugs from India
Dutch companies have ordered dangerous designer drugs from India with a street value of nearly €2 billion between 2019 and 2025, NOS and Follow the Money discovered. Thirty Dutch importers easily engaged Indian labs to replicate molecules of prohibited substances, then sell these in the Netherlands with very large profit margins, the journalists found. The substances include Indian stimulants, ketamine-like substances, and the “zombie drug” flakka.
NOS and FTM uncovered over 700 orders from 30 Dutch importers for raw materials for designer drugs, ready-made products, and substances used to cut drugs. The orders involved a total of 153,000 kilograms of substances. According to the researchers, many of these substances are resold from the Netherlands to customers abroad.
The Dutch traders paid nearly €46.2 million for the 153,000 kilograms of substances. According to calculations by NOS and FTM based on the value of the involved drugs on the online market, the Dutch traders resold them for nearly €2 billion - a massive profit margin.
The trade in designer drugs is so lucrative that sellers continue even after getting caught, the researchers found. For example, in April, the regulators NVWA and the Health and Youth Care Inspectorate took down 43 sites offering designer drugs. Conversations from sources in this world told NOS and FTM that this had little effect. “To my knowledge, not a single provider has truly stopped completely,” a dealer said. Many sellers simply created a new site from abroad. Others moved sales to channels on apps like Signal and Telegram.
Designer drugs, also known as “research chemicals” or “new psychoactive substances,” is a collective term for substances that are almost exactly the same as illegal drugs. Because they differ slightly from the drugs listed in the Opium List, they are not yet banned and can freely enter the Netherlands.
These substances can be very dangerous, according to the National Poison Information Center. Many of the substances imported from India are linked to addiction, high heart rate, high blood pressure, heart attacks, psychoses, comas, brain damage, epileptic seizures, and sometimes death.
