At least 8 illegal designer drug sites back online via a foreign domain
At least eight websites taken offline by the Dutch authorities for selling prohibited designer drugs like 2-MMC are back online. Their design, product range, and contact details remain largely unchanged, but they’ve moved their hosting or domain abroad, according to an investigation by Investico and De Groene Amsterdammer.
Investico identified these relaunches by comparing contact details, bank account numbers, marketing, and other technical characteristics of the over 40 sites taken down earlier this year by the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) and the Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (IGJ) with sites currently available in the Netherlands.
One of the investigated webshops reappeared online for the second time last month. “The old domain has been suspended; we have a new domain,” the website owners announced on their Telegram channel. The logo - a monkey on a rocket - remains unchanged. The site also still sells banned substances, including 2-MMC and Monkey Dust.
The other relaunched sites also closely resemble their predecessors. In many cases, the owners only adjusted the name slightly or moved the site to a different domain extension.
Designer drugs are drugs for which the active ingredient has been changed slightly to evade the Opium Act. Last year, the government amended the Opium Act to try to break this cat-and-mouse game. Instead of banning every new drug individually, the law now allows for entire groups of substances to be banned. Despite this, three of the eight relaunched sites sell brand-new products explicitly touted as legal alternatives to previously banned drugs, promised to have the same effect, Investico found.
The NVWA is aware of these websites reappearing after it takes sites offline. Where possible, the NVWA contacts the foreign authorities involved, but “many of these websites are outside our legal or operational reach,” a spokesperson for the regulator told Investico.
The Public Prosecution Service (OM) called the trade in designer drugs and illegal medicines a persistent problem. It has multiple investigations ongoing, a spokesperson told Investico. These are often complex, partly due to the complicated financial structures behind these webshops.
