The front page of Der Spiegel this week: ‘Cheese, coke and killers, how lax drugs policies turned Holland into a maffia paradise’

29 comments

  7. I wouldn’t call a lax drug policy the issue but how illogical it is. Making it legal for coffee shops to sell weed but making it illegal for them to buy or produce it is a huge stimulus for criminal organizations.

    Allowing a legal supply chain for weed would at least take a part of the profits of criminal organizations away. However, they now use their built up structures for cocaine and other drugs.

  9. #Fuck the “Drug War”.

    It’s a total failure, and only serves to legitimize the black markets. Legalize, regulate & tax all recreational drugs.

    *PS:* I’m a recovering cheese addict.

  12. Some context is probably missing. Here are some things that happened the last few years:

    Famous journalist got murdered by the mafia, also known as the morrocan mob. The name is misleading, it’s more of a gang really. Journalist name was peter r de vries

    Lawyer of an informant against said mafia got murdered as well as family members of the informant

    Same mob tried to blow up a news station.

    Innocent people get shot because the mafia mistakes them

    Shootouts and grenade attacks were done against hookah bars. In one case, they decapitated a rival gang and put his head near a hookah bar

    Serious threats were made against our PM.

    Lots of more things happened. Dutch people don’t seem to care or pretend it’s not that bad but i have yet to see this happen in comparable western european countries

  16. This is the result of half measures, just legalize and regulate all the drugs and cut of the funding source of the criminal underworld

  17. So ‘koks’ is coke in Germany? Need to remember that..

    ..anyway, beautiful illustration, kudos to the artist.

  18. And now with Germany of all countries legalizing weed, the Netherlands will look particularly insane with their half-measure that ensures the existence of a billion-euro industry of organized criminality. Hopefully this will finally spur them into action.

  24. Please understand that this has nothing to do with the weed situation. Although the rules for that seems archaic and insane now, it’s not the problem.

    The “mafia” and organised crime that’s starting to become bad in the Netherlands is due to hard(er) drugs like XTC and Cocaine.

    The people running organised drug manufacture and logistics found out that NL is just an insanely good place to do it from.

    Remember that biggest harbour in Europe thing in Rotterdam? Turns out it works great to get raw materials in and final produce out for drugs too.

    The problem it caused is rival gangs ripping each other but the groups are now centered around nationality, identity and ethnicity. Easy to rile each other up.

    Secondly the business is becoming centralised and more global, which means an insane amount of money. And with that comes escalation tension and violence. That viciois circle is growing now.

    Just an example of the scale. In 2021 the Dutch customs confiscates around 10000kg (10 tons) of Cocaine A MONTH from the harbour of Rotterdam. And that’s only what they catch.

    Cocaine is worth roughly 45euro per gram here at street value. That’s half a billion worth of cocaine a month.

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