Most incidents involving drug flakka occur in Zeeland-West Brabant | BredaToday

By means of: Eveline Jansen

Sun May 5, 7:00 PM

Police

ZEELAND-WEST-BRABANT – The designer drug flakka is on the rise in the Netherlands. There has been a significant increase in particular in the Zeeland-West Brabant region. The extremely addictive and dangerous drug also causes the police a lot of extra work. Last year, police units in our country had to respond almost a thousand times to flakka-related incidents. That’s an average of about three times a day.

Flakka, it is also called the zombie drug. There are many American videos on the Internet of people rolling convulsively across the street or even attacking people, like zombies in a horror movie. The extremely addictive and dangerous designer drug also ensures that the police have their hands full. Figures seen by the NPO Radio 1 podcast The Crime Bureau of Omroep WNL show that police units in the Netherlands had to be called out almost a thousand times last year for flakka-related incidents. That was an average of about three times a day. This involved vandalism, nuisance, burglaries, theft, stabbings or collisions with possibly even fatal consequences.

Most incidents in Zeeland-West Brabant

Flakka is especially on the rise in the Zeeland-West Brabant region. In 2023, the police were deployed to 995 flakka-related incidents throughout the Netherlands. Of these incidents, 566 were reported from Zeeland-West Brabant. That is more than half of the total number. So the police certainly have their hands full. Freek Pecht, synthetic drugs coordinator in Zeeland-West-Brabant, has seen the numbers increasing since 2018: “These are people with misunderstood behavior who cause nuisance. So people walk on the street at night – naked or not – and then sneak into the gardens of local residents or business premises.” These types of reports are often initially thought to be burglary, but it increasingly appears to concern people who are under the influence of flakka. “If a flakka user is in delirium, it is very difficult for the police to calm or control such a person,” says Pecht. “We know of examples where the police have to jump on a suspect not with one police officer, but with five or six police officers and ultimately put him in handcuffs.”

New variant

At the end of April, the Opium Act in the Netherlands was amended and the legal variant of flakka was banned. The police are pleased that this variant can no longer be sold. “That gives us as police a better toolbox, because we can now act on discovering that previously legal variant,” Pecht explains. Yet he is not comfortable with it. “New variants are constantly emerging in the world of designer drugs. In the short term, the criminalization has an effect, but in the long term we have to wait for the day – which will come today or tomorrow – when a new flakka variant appears again.” The police officer therefore hopes that the law to criminalize designer drugs will be introduced soon. In the Netherlands, a new bill is ready to ban entire groups of new psychoactive substances at once. This is to prevent criminals from shifting their activities to substances that are not yet banned. The law still has to be approved by the Senate.