Even head of government threatened: drug war in the Netherlands

Are the Netherlands on the way to becoming a narco state?

The thought is not far off when one follows the topicality.

There are two mega-lawsuits going on in Amsterdam against criminal gangs who have made a fortune with drugs.

Anyone who got in their way was killed.

At first they were just competitors and renegades in their own ranks. Then the circle got bigger and bigger. A lawyer and a well-known journalist were murdered in the middle of the street. Most recently, people from the scene are even said to have scouted Mark Rutte, the prime minister. We know from the trials what that means: where “spotters” appear, killers are not far away. They do their work with assault rifles, hand grenades and bazookas. That sounds like Netflix, but it's Dutch reality.

The chairman of the police association stated two years ago that the country “definitely had characteristics of a narco state”.

Jan Struijs justified his judgment with the brutality in the milieu and the enormous shadow economy.

Both are a direct result of the booming trade in synthetic drugs and cocaine.

Because the profit margin is many times higher than with cannabis.

An ecstasy pill is made for twenty cents in Limburg, but sells for twenty euros in Australia.

The sales of synthetic drugs alone are estimated at twenty billion euros in street sales.

Money arouses boundless greed and leads to violence as well.

The state forced illegal action

In the cocaine trade, the container ports in Rotterdam and in neighboring Antwerp, Belgium, have become by far the largest transshipment centers in Europe. They have displaced Spanish ports that have long been the natural gateway to Europe for drug traffickers in South America. Moroccan and Albanian clans have established themselves as wholesalers on the North Sea and supply all of Europe. This is no coincidence, but the result of an almost ideal business climate that the Netherlands itself has created.

The reason is the liberalism, or rather: laxity, which is evident when dealing with drugs. Cannabis has been legal since 1976, at least for the end consumer in the coffee shop. However, the cultivation remained forbidden, whereby the state formally enforced illegal behavior. The cannabis cafes can only get supplies on the black market. It works like an economic stimulus program for drug dealers. And they also find otherwise favorable circumstances. The Netherlands has a perfectly developed infrastructure, the European borders are open, and the distances to Germany and France are short. In addition, the penalties are lower than anywhere else. Anyone caught with a kilo of heroin usually does not spend more than a year behind bars. In Germany and Spain it is at least three years, in Greece even ten.

No longer just a mafia group

However, the Netherlands is not yet a narco state in the narrower sense of the word.

From an analytical point of view, the term only makes sense if organized crime successfully infiltrates state structures.

A drug lord like Pablo Escobar was a member of the Medellín City Council and the Colombian Parliament at the height of his power.

He enjoyed immunity, was able to bribe judges and politicians, and run a luxury farm with a private zoo.

The Netherlands is far from such a situation.

The authorities looked away for a long time, but have now woken up.

Ridouan Taghi, for example, has to answer in court, which has been searched for as the most dangerous criminal in the country. His right hand is about to be extradited from Colombia. The investigators have managed to crack the services of the providers of encrypted data services several times. At times they were able to read in real time how business and revenge killings are being planned. That changed their image of modern retail. Today it is no longer a mafia group that controls the entire supply chain, from coca farmers to end users. Rather, many actors mesh like gears. They don't know each other, specialize in certain services and operate globally. That is only possible with modern communication, and that makes them vulnerable.

Organized crime investigators have given heavy blows in the past two years.

This put the gangs under pressure.

This is the only way to explain that they are now even threatening the head of government.

In order to really drain the swamp, however, the state must also remove the structural advantages that it has created itself.

That concerns the gray area created by the half legalization of cannabis and the far too low penalties for drug possession.

At the beginning there should be parting from an illusion: that one can be a stoner oasis in a globally networked world without attracting people who earn their money with hard drugs.