Trimbos Institute

The number of people who end up in the emergency room after taking too much GHB increased explosively over the past years, doctors at the emergency rooms of hospitals in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Nijmegen and Haarlem, and the Dutch association for emergency medical services NVSHA said to NRC. 

More children in primary schools in the Netherlands are being bullied than parents and teachers know of. One in three bullied kids never tell their teachers, parents or friends about it, according to study 'What works against bullying' by five universities and the Trimbos Institute, RTL Nieuws reports.

About 30 percent of Dutch kids are sometimes bullied. One in 14 children are even bullied multiple times a week. A third of these bullied kids have never told anyone about it, according to the study. 

Online store Bol.com stopped selling laughing gas cylinders, meant to be use for whipped cream sprayers. The canisters are increasingly used in combination with balloons or N2O crackers as drugs, and Bol.com therefore finds it irresponsible to keep selling them, a spokesperson confirmed to NH Nieuws.

The Trimbos institute issued a "red alert" warning on Thursday for dangerous ecstasy pills that contain a fatal dose of PMMA. The institute found numerous of these red pills with a Superman logo on both sides.

Ecstasy pills often contains PMMA, but this is an "extremely high dose", a spokesperson for Trimbos said to RTL Nieuws. This high dose triggered the institute to issue the national warning. Trimbos expects to know more about the pills during the course of Friday, but issued the warning immediately due to the Amsterdam Dance Event that started on Wednesday.

The risks of taking so-called "ecstasy light", officially 4FA, are much bigger than assumed. Using the drug can lead to heart problems and strokes, according to the preliminary results of a still ongoing investigation by Trimbos Institute and Jellinek. The final results of the investigation is expected in October, but Trimbos found the risks of the drug so great that it was decided not to wait for the final results before alerting the public

Almost a tenth of Dutch boys between the ages of 12 and 15 years can be characterized as addicted to gaming, according to a study done by Utrecht University among nearly 2 thousand boys.

People in the Netherlands were warned against dangerous ecstasy tablets that have extremely high levels of MDMA in them. The Drug Information and Monitoring System (DIMS) is repeatedly finding the bad drugs across the Netherlands, prompting the Trimbos Institute to issue the nationwide warning.

Ecstasy use in the Netherlands is four times as high as in the other European Union countries - 2.5 percent of Dutch people sometimes use ecstasy, compared to the EU average of 0.6 percent.

Young people between the ages of 16 and 24 years are increasingly taking recreational drugs when going out. The polls used are also much stronger and used more often, which makes for increased risk to health and well being. This is according to research done by the Trimbos institute.

The section of the Dutch population who smoke has remained equal to 2012 at 25 percent. E-cigarettes are on the rise, however. Last year, 3 percent of the population has an e-cigarette every now and then, whereas in 2012, only 1 percent did.

The number of problematic opiate users in the Netherlands dropped by an estimated 21 percent, compared to the period 2008-2009, according to a report from the Trimbos Institute and the Community Health Services Amsterdam (GGD-Amsterdam).