Dutch coffeeshop owner jailed and fined €10m for overstocking cannabis

(Photo: ANP)

The owner of a coffeeshop in the Netherlands has been jailed for 16 weeks and fined a massive €10million after a court found him and other staff guilty of keeping too much cannabis on the premises.

Under Dutch 'tolerance' rules, coffeeshops must keep their stock below 500g (18oz) at any given time, regardless of how much cannabis they might sell in a day. This typically necessitates frequent 're-ups' throughout the day if a shop is doing brisk business.

It seems Meddie Willemsen flouted this arrangement; police busted the coffeeshop with 200kg of dope on two occasions. Willemsen and his fellow staff were convicted of exporting drugs and membership of a criminal organization as well as hosting too much cannabis at the shop. The coffeeshop, 'Checkpoint', was located close to the Belgian border and reputedly served up to 3000 customers per day.

The prosecutor in charge of the case summed up the reasons for the case like this:

"In short, a well-oiled machinery was ready at the back door to sell the largest possible quantity of drugs. Many dozens of kilograms a day. Each member of the team had a separate role to play. The team included a purchasing department, a transport department and a processing department. We regard that as a criminal organisation, because crimes were committed. The volume of drugs being sold there was absurd, annual turnover was nearly 30 million euros."

In the Netherlands, small scale dealing of cannabis in licensed coffeeshops is permitted. However, when businesses get too greedy, or take on an international perspective (deliberately targeting customers from outside Holland's borders), they risk incurring the wrath of the authorities, which is what happened to Checkpoint.

Read more at Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Guatemala drug czar and police chief both arrested over 'stolen cocaine'

Two of Guatemala's leading figures in the fight against the cocaine trade have been arrested for alleged involvement in a bloody drugs heist in which 700kg of cocaine was stolen from a criminal gang.

National police chief Baltazar Gonzalez and anti-drug czar Nelly Bonilla were both arrested, along with another police officer, by government agents working with the International Commission Against Impunity, a UN-sponsored anti-corruption agency in Guatemala. The arrests follow an incident in April last year in which five police officers died in a fire-fight with drug traffickers. The gun battle is thought to have taken place after the officers - acting as part of a larger group - stole 700kg of cocaine from a warehouse used by the traffickers and had returned to collect more cocaine and a stash of automatic weapons. The group were allegedly ambushed by the drug gang upon their return, resulting in the deaths.

Guatemalan anti-narcotics agents allegedly prevented federal prosecutors from accessing the crime scene and the deaths of the five officers were never investigated internally, leading prosecutors to suspect that something was awry. Their investigations led them to uncover a well-organised crime syndicate within the anti-narcotics force which sought to profit from intercepting shipments of drugs and weapons. The corruption seemingly went all the way to the top.

Despite the arrests on Tuesday, no formal charges have yet been brought against the men.

Guatemala is a strategically important part of the trafficking route for cocaine as it transits from Columbia to Mexico on its route to the US and beyond. Mexican cartels are understood to operate widely within neighbouring Guatemala and corruption is rife within the country.

Read more at the Miami Herald and BBC News

Mephedrone floods the UK collective conciousness

Mephedrone, MMCat, Miaow, Bubble... Call it what you will, the UK's must-have narcotic accessory this season, for better or worse, is most definitely Mephedrone.

As predicted, the UK press coverage of this new and currently legal high is now in full-swing, with Mephedrone stories in every corner of the media, from music magazines, through hyperbole-prone tabloids, to the more respectable newspapers.

Adding his 2-cents to the press free-for-all is Professor David Nutt, the renegade former government drugs advisor who was sacked for making some fairly innocuous statements comparing the relative danger of consuming ecstasy versus riding horses (statistically, equine encounters are far more likely to cause injury or death, though tend to make for less embarrasing Facebook photographs).

Writing in the Guardian, Professor Nutt calls for a 4th classification - Class D - for substances which are known to be being abused but have not undergone sufficient research to be properly classified, such as mephedrone. Substances in this cateogry, Nutt Argues, should be made available to adults under controlled conditions, with suppliers regulated and warnings coming with the product to let users know they are consuming an untested and potentially dangerous drug.

The article cites the arrest of 7 students in Lancaster, allegedly picked up in a club with a drug which they claim was Mephedrone. In such cases, suspects are arrested and released on police bail while the suspicious substances they were caught with are tested. It is unclear how classifying Mephedrone as a Class D substance would change this; Police are more or less duty-bound to arrest anyone they encounter carrying a bag of white powder, since it may well be a controlled substance such as the Class-A cocaine. Seizures sent to the lab for analysis will typically be away for weeks, during which time the arrested person remains a suspect. On-the-spot tests do exist for some drugs but they typically only indicate the presence of a specific substance. Just because mepehedrone doesn't show up positive on an on-the-spot cocaine test doesn't mean it isn't ketamine, speed, heroin, or any number of other controlled substances. As such, the police are pretty much obligated to arrest in situations where a white powder is discovered in suspicious circumstances.

A point made in this article in the Metro - and in much of the more thoughtful press coverage of mephedrone - concerns why users feel willing to turn to a relatively untested compound to get high. 'The Recession' and consistently falling cocaine purity, are singled out as the two biggest factors. The article find some suitably middle-class mephedrone users and cites David, a graphic designer:

'David pays £45 for five grams; in comparison, cocaine costs an average of £50 per gram.'

Paul, an osteopath, elaborates:

‘The problem is that people are sick and tired of spending high amounts on rubbish drugs ... You don’t even know what’s in them'

Paul then goes a bit off-track by suggesting:

'At least with meow [mephedrone] you know what you’re getting and it also gives you the impression you’re not funding the wrong people; some sites are run by people who are genuinely selling it for plants.’

This is wrong on both counts; whilst many (and to NarcoTrends' current knowledge, most) online suppliers of Mephedrone seem to be supplying a pure product, there is absolutely no regulation of the purity of mephedrone bought online or anywhere else. This, of course, is much like the illegal drug market.

In addition, Narcotrends has yet to find a single online mephedrone supplier that seems to be genuinely retailing/wholesaling fertilizer to the horticultural sector, though we could cite many examples of so-called 'plant-food' sites which retail a single product - mephedrone - in quantities too small to be of much use to all but the most amateur of gardeners.

Of course, we are happy to be corrected on such assumptions. If there are any mephedrone suppliers out there selling to the agricultural/horticultural sector, we'd love to hear from you.