Drug dealers are promoting their products through various means including dropping off free samples at student houses in Groningen and other parts of the Netherlands.
A spokesperson from the Trimbos Institute, a national knowledge centre for drug abuse told NOS they are concerned about drug dealers making use of professional advertising methods.
As they’ve gotten bolder, they’re promoting designer drugs by handing out free trial packages and menus of their products to student houses in Groningen, even if they never ordered anything from the dealer. The drugs include ecstasy, ketamine, and MDMA.
Recently the designer drug website Nakkie has spread multiple free trial packages of the designer drug 2-MMC, which users say gives them a temporary energy boost, across student houses in Groningen, NOS reported.
At the moment 2-MMC, a variant of the illegal 3-MMC (also known as party drug miauw miauw), is legal as long as it isn’t sold for human consumption. A statute change to ban all these substances in the Dutch opium law is pending. The House of Representatives has already approved the change, however, the Senate still has to vote on it. This would entail that a lot of designer drug websites, like Nakkie, could soon be illegal.
A Groningen student who spoke with NOS said he found a package of drugs in his home.
“There was a vague package on the table in the kitchen, I decided to open it. There was a bag of 2-MMC with two discount codes in it,” the student said. He said he was surprised, but says he has not used the drugs.
Besides drug packages, flyers and menus, there is also a lot of promotion and selling of drugs happening on text apps WhatsApp and Telegram.
A spokesperson for the National Police told NOS that it is often still difficult for them to trace who a dealer is just from their flyers.
