The toxic waste from drugs like ecstasy, speed or crystal meth | DW Documentary

The toxic waste from drugs like ecstasy, speed or crystal meth | DW Documentary

We join the Dutch police on the trail of drug Mafia gangs I think we’re on to something producing synthetic drugs not only requires a lot of chemicals it also produces tons of Highly toxic waste which usually ends up in the environment there are homes and Children Here driven by greed the cartels often

Pressure residents into cooperating uh a farmer received a threatening letter in the letter box it read We Know Where Your Children go to school how dangerous is this toxic waste for humans and the environment across the border in Western Germany there are problems too this is a sleepy Village North of

Beeld in April 2019 a startling Discovery was made we just couldn’t imagine that such a large drug lab could be set up on our doorstep in this Village without anyone noticing RF Lori heads up the local volunteer fire department one Sunday morning during breakfast he saw something

Shocking looking out of the window there was a fire raging not far from his home right next to his Workshop Lori drove straight over just as he arrived two strangers were leaving the burning building which belonged to a local businessman at that moment two men came

Out of the building and one of them had a gas mask on fil they fled the scene in a van other firefighters from Ral Lor’s Department then arrived they entered the building to investigate at first they didn’t know what to make of it there were countless propane gas cylinders all

Stacked in the entrance area it was almost impossible to get through the explosive cylinders were not only dangerous but also highly unusual why would anyone need so much gas the the sheer amount of it was suspicious further inside they found 1,000 L canisters filled with chemicals likely both toxic and

Explosive the whole thing was a bit overwhelming over the next few hours it became clear that Lori and his team were not dealing with a normal fire they had stumbled upon the largest drug laboratory ever found in Germany the Netherlands it’s December 2022 we’re in the province of

Limur we’re out with an undercover investigator from the Dutch police to protect his identity we’re hiding his face and have distorted his voice we’ll call him Yan it’s always good in a exciting to be out at night we have information that there might be a drug lab somewhere here

In baingan a village near here we don’t know if there are people there now the special task force will go in first to check it out and make sure the area is safe if there are people inside they’ll be arrested and if there are weapons they’ll be confiscated who should I follow follow

You who the guy with the Toyota the most common synthetic drugs are ecstasy which is consumed in pill form speed which can be snorted and crystal meth the crystal form of methamphetamine which can be smoked or also snorted Yan boel and his team meanwhile are getting ready to storm the drug lab

They discovered it while investigating Undercover the police approach in Convoy the heavily armed Special Forces Unit is in the black van they also have a bulldozer ready to tear open the gates so the special task force can enter quickly and surprise anyone who may be inside the door’s open they’re going

In wearing gas masks to protect themselves from the chemicals used in drug production the police storm the building at the first door the officers find nothing you could try all the doors it’s building 52d or 2D should we open it yes if you think there’s someone there

The police break open a second door and then a third inside the warehouse there are barrels of chemicals or something so the LFO will now come and check them but I think it’ll be a good Hall the LFO is a department of the Dutch police force that specializes in chemicals used in

Drugs when something suspicious is found they go in after the Special Forces Unit to check whether there are hazardous substances and secure the scene they’ve done an inspection to see what’s in the lab and if there are any toxic chemicals once we get the okay from them we can go

In we’re going come with me give you now the other police officers can enter the building we’re going in too our colleagues from the LFO say no drugs have been produced here yet this is a laboratory under construction this is where the stuff is this is

Rob Rob the fry is heading up the LFO operation he’s been taking a closer look at the chemicals this is a drug laboratory under construction we see here a very large boiler tank with a capacity of around 1,000 L then there are all sorts of suction devices this still has to be

Assembled if you look at the size of that tank you could boil several hundred liters of chemicals in there at once now let’s look at the chemicals over here they’re in this tent these barrels contain formamide formic acid and phosphoric acid it’s an amphetamine laboratory almost ready to begin production the

Chemicals would be mixed and heated in large metal containers using gas burners and there are tons of chemicals toxic acids that would have produced around 1,000 kilos of amphetamines with a street value of €1 million in just one week Yan boras and his colleague y throl andbag who’s a special investigator for

Drug Laboratories have seen many such crime scenes what’s a bit unusual about this place is that here are the chemicals here is the laboratory and next to it is a room where people who work here can sleep or have a cup of coffee the thing is once the process is

Running you can’t interrupt it you have to stick with it and if something goes wrong you have to be able to intervene and that’s where things get especially problematic because the people who make these drugs don’t usually know what to do if it goes wrong and so sometimes there are

Accidents and people get seriously hurt because things explode and so on we’ve seen it all the Netherlands is Europe’s biggest Center for producing synthetic drugs by Chance the police also stumble on a cannabis Plantation nearby during their operation but here the investigators are more concerned about the synthetic drugs

As they involve toxic chemicals very few of the drug makers are chemists and aware of the dangers fires and explosions occur time and again local residents are also at risk even though most of them have no idea what’s happening in their neighborhood various chemical Vapors are released during the

Process carbon monoxide can be released which is dangerous the concentration might even be high enough to kill someone that’s why the special unit that went in first were wearing protective suits they include masks that filter out these substances so they can work safely it’s still pretty clean here

Because the lab was still under construction It’s usually the case that once they start producing the place gets pretty dirty they don’t know exactly what they’re doing so there may chemicals everywhere you have to be careful where you step otherwise your shoes might melt away and burn it’s quite

Dangerous large quantities of toxic waste are produced during the manufacturer of the drugs the Dutch police told us the first 1,000 kilos of amphetamines in this laboratory would have produced up to 30,000 kilos of toxic waste so what happens to that waste back in Germany in the city of dorf we

Find answers from the state criminal police force forensic scientist Johannes sagaman led the chemical analyses at the huge drug laboratory found near beeld in 2019 it too was a laboratory for producing amphetamines including speed thanks to 3D imaging he can now tour the crime scene from his

Computer this is the view from the warehouse to the outside you can then turn around and have a view into the building you can see a lot of canisters stored here or these ibcs with a capacity of 1,000 lers some contain waste chemicals further back are the ones with

Pure chemicals used to synthesize the drugs there were two rooms set up for the synthesizing of amphetamines a break room for the drug makers an elaborate ventilation system to filter out the toxic Vapors and transport them outside equipment for producing 1,000 L of amphetamine oil per week well shielded from the outside

World plus 30,000 L canisters for storing chemicals and toxic waste and here the investigators made a shocking Discovery and shine is canisters at the back is crucial let’s zoom in closer at the moment the photo was taken there was still a bag on top of the outlet but we later discovered a deep

Well that had been drilled here where the waste was being emptied into the ground the hole went down 12 M below the surface the investigators were alarmed the chemical waste would not only contaminate the soil and kill plants and animals and microorganisms any person who came into contact with acostic chemicals could

Also burn their skin and if they drank the contaminated groundwater could even damage their internal organs the police investigation showed the laboratory had only been in operation for a few weeks it was set up by a Dutch gang a short circuit probably triggered the fire in the plant luckily the laboratory had only

Been able to produce a small amount of drugs and therefore hadn’t discharged much waste an environmental report found no acute risk to local residents it’s no longer possible to determine how much has seeped into the ground but we believed it was only a few hundred lers at least from the tank that

Was connected at the time back in the Netherlands investigator Yan Boos is visiting the public prosecutor’s office in M he’s investigating a case of chemicals trafficking and wants to discuss the next steps with public prosecutor Rob Smits appointments like this are not uncommon for Yan boas drug production is booming in the

Netherlands ecstasy and speed produced here can make it all the way to Australia 80% of Dutch made drugs are exported one European study found that the cartels sell1 19 billion EUR worth every year a destructive business all around the up the resulting chemical waste pollutes the forest or runs into

Rivers it’s not good for wildlife but it’s not good for people either when children play in the area they come into contact with the chemicals it’s dangerous Yan boas is taking a criminal investigator from Amsterdam to see an illegal drug dump site Shana mbom is investigating the phenomenon of drug waste throughout the

Country she’s hoping that Yan boal can give her information on what’s happening in the province of limur it’s an area of particular interest because it lies close to the border with Germany and Belgium things here in the limber area that are that is very close to the borders is very different for inance

Than in the northern region of the Netherland or the Eastern region of the of the or the Netherlands the big question is are the drug producers transporting their waste and disposing of it far away from the Laboratories to minimize the risk of detection or are they disposing of it

Close by which is cheaper and easier if you want to know how far that work the waste is traffic you have to know where it comes from uh and often we don’t we don’t know it um there there are there are too many dumpings to analyze the

Content there’s also a theory that there might be like professional dumpers who collect the waste from several production locations uh and then dump it at one spot Yan boas shows sh mayal a dumping site right on the German Dutch border an idilic rural location during the day the area is

Popular with Walkers and cyclists but at night it’s quiet the field is surrounded by Woods a perfect place to dispose of waste if you look at this or the good thing is at least that it’s in containers so the waste is contained but you can see that it’s kind of messy

Spreading around so there is a risk of that it’s going to leak and then it would be dangerous if you get in contact with the substances itself uh but it can be worse there are cases where the where the waste is directly dumped in into the

Land or into the water uh and that can have severe results uh for PL PLS but also for animals or the yeah the First Responders the Dutch authorities find around 200 such dump sides every year sometimes the drug producers simply dump the waste into the sewage system but if the chemicals reach a

Certain concentration they disrupt the function of the sewage treatment plants so with this option there’s a high risk of detection throughout her investigation Shana mabal has found that the cartels dispose of 70% of their toxic waste in sparsely populated nature reserves they often steal cars or trucks

Load them full of waste and then abandon them or set them on fire or they bribe Farmers to let them mix the smelly waste into their liquid manure the chemicals are then spread out onto the fields Dutch police find 250,000 kilos of drug waste every year but according

To estimates that’s only a third of the actual amount of waste produced probably the criminal networks are getting better in hiding the drug waste and disposing it in ways that we don’t uh easily detect at Germany’s criminal police office in Vis Boden concern is also growing about the dangers of drug waste

The large lab discovered near beled shows the Dutch drug Mafia is also active in Germany and the way doesn’t stop at the border either in 2018 there was a case where a truck was simply driven across the border a police officer noticed a brown liquid leaking out of it it contained 10

Tons of production waste is another forensic scientist and a chemist before he explains what actually makes the waste so toxic he shows us the drugs that the police have confiscated is know this is a bag of ecstasy tablets the bags inside it contain around 100,000 tablets this is one of two bags that

Were seized in one Hall so 200,000 tablets in total an ecstasy tablet typically sells for around 5 so these two bags alone have a street value of around1 million EUR €1 million e for two bags that’s an indication of just how much money can be made from these drugs it explains why

The producers are willing to handle toxic chemicals without fully understanding what they’re doing MZ then does a little experiment to demonstrate just how dangerous the chemicals are in every amphetamine laboratory you’ll find at least two of these four acids often in very large quantities concentrated phosphoric acid concentrated formic acid concentrated

Sulfuric acid and concentrated hydrochloric acid each one poses specific dangers foric acid for example releases carbon monoxide if it’s heated too much that’s why fatal accidents occur at amphetamine Laboratories due to carbon monoxide poisoning now let’s look at the effect of concentrated sulfuric acid on organic materials the organic material he’s

Going to use is simple household sugar it consists of nothing other than carbon hydrates a basic building block of Life found in the cells of our bodies so what happens the acid breaks down or rather burns the sugar within just a short time this would have the same effect on

Living systems so I could equally burn the surface of my skin addition to corrosive acids the waste contains other substances which are likely dangerous too the bad news is that all these organic substances that are byproducts of amphetamine synthesis have not actually been pharmacologically studied so it’s not exactly possible to say what

Toxic effects they’ll likely have experts suspect that the drug waste contains carcinogenic substances but whether they could pose a risk to humans and nature has not yet been properly researched in 2018 a study from the Netherlands found residues of the chemical waste in corn and therefore in

The food chain but was that an isolated case or evidence of something more widespread nobody knows as there’s no regular screening for these chemicals the cartels appear to have been busy expanding their activities in rural areas yen boal meets with a spokesperson for the limur farming Community the undercover investigator wants to know

What experience the farmers have had with the mafia it becomes clear that the gangs are specifically targeting storehouses and barns to produce drugs and hide waste let me give you an example a farmer received a threatening letter in the letter box it read We Know Where Your Children go to school

In other words farmers are being blackmailed and intimidated into continuing to do this or into making their premises available even though they no longer want to Farmer Ty thrag has himself been lucky so far unlike other farmers and friends of his he has not yet been approached by the drug producers he’s

All too aware that standing up to the brutal and financially powerful cartels is not easy so how can can the problem of the drug Labs be brought under control one possibility would be to Target the root of the problem by taking chemicals used in drug production out of

Circulation before they can get into the wrong hands the substances are mostly brought to Europe by sea from China arriving here at the Port of Hamburg for example cust investigators have received a tip off they’re following a truck that may be transporting drug chemicals so we haven’t seen a container

We’ve picked up a container here at the Container Terminal which we will now take to the VTO H area to be x-rayed the truck is put into a huge x-ray machine where its contents can be scanned but the image on the computer doesn’t appear to show anything suspicious Stefan I’m finished can you

Come over so I’ve studied the X-ray let’s look at it together I haven’t found any irregularities and the container itself is also negative the container itself is negative no sign of manipulation let me show you again here yeah but the xray images only provide a limited view so the investigators decide to

Break open the container my impression is that the goods are ultimately no different from what we’ve already seen on the X-ray image we can also see now during the manual inspection that the goods are packed in different ways and that we have a few more packages on top which

Was also clearly visible on the X-ray there’s nothing here that gives rise to suspicion that would justify a more indepth inspection from our point of view we can now say the goods are okay since the 1990s Germany and the Netherlands have had a list of chemicals that are considered precursors for drug

Production these substances are subject to customs controls but the drug producers regularly change their formulas plus many companies also use these chemicals for completely legal purposes so the work of the Customs officers is like searching for a needle in a hay stock and they can only give a

Fraction of the containers a thorough check back in the Netherlands the authorities are now trying to enlist the help of the general public their hope is that this could allow new Laboratories to be discovered more quickly here a former police officer is explaining to local people how a drug

Laboratory works and what it smells like pmk is a precursor of MDMA which is the active ingredient in Easy inas in ecstasy right when I ask young people that they know the answer too pmk smells a little bit like a the hope is that Vigilant residents who notice a suspicious smell in the

Neighborhood will report it to the police who can then disrupt the operations of the drug cartels and thereby stop them spreading we’re on the road again with Yan boas he wants to show us another crime these are the two garages where we were a few months ago this is where the

Laboratory was the laboratory was in number four and the chemicals were in number five it’s very dangerous when they’re right next to each other like that the drug producers simply dumped their toxic waste into the adjacent stream which then became contaminated it had to be cleaned up at Great

Expense you us this is where it was the hose came around the corner and led down into the water people live all around here children play here there are animals house pets that might drink from the water yes it’s very worrying every year the Dutch government spends €6 million EUR on cleanup

Operations like this one The Wider risks are rarely examined closely and in Germany the problem gets even less attention the authorities don’t keep a central record of how many illegal drug waste dumps are identified per region each year

Whether it’s ecstasy, speed or crystal meth, producing illicit synthetic drugs generates toxic waste. This often ends up in the local environment, posing a threat to humans, wildlife and the land. We look at cases in the Netherlands and Germany.

Could we just be seeing the tip of the iceberg? How big is the problem of waste from illicit drug production? In the Netherlands – the European center of illegal synthetic drug production – a public debate is underway over the dangers of toxic waste. But in Germany, there’s still little awareness of the problem. However, investigators are increasingly sounding the alarm: the discovery of clandestine drug laboratories has shown that the cartels from the Netherlands are also active in Germany – and disposing of their waste there illegally.
Producing 1kg of amphetamines generates up to 30kg of toxic waste. In the Netherlands, the police find around 250,000 kilograms of this waste every year. Experts estimate that is only around a third of the actual amount of toxic waste produced. The gangs get rid of the rest in ways that go unnoticed – such as dumping it in nature reserves, where it seeps into the ground, pouring it into ponds and streams, where it poisons fish and other aquatic creatures, or mixing it into farmers’ liquid manure, which then gets spread over the fields.
This documentary investigates a subject that has so far gotten very little attention. It includes exclusive footage of the largest drug laboratory ever found in Germany and exposes a shocking case where the drug makers disposed of their toxic waste via a specially dug well, endangering local residents. The film crew also goes undercover with an investigator from the Dutch police. Together they make an incredible discovery.
The film sheds light on the dark underworld of synthetic drug production and explores the question of how dangerous this toxic waste could be to us all.

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