Heavy painkillers such as oxycodone and morphine are widely traded on the black market, according to research Zembla. These highly addictive opiates, easy to obtain via Telegram or WhatsApp, largely come from pharmacies and hospitals. “You can go into the opiate vault dozens of times a day and no one will notice.”
Such painkillers are normally only available with a doctor’s prescription. That is not surprising: opiates are highly addictive and the risks of overdose are high. This phenomenon has been causing many deaths in the United States for years.
But it is quite easy to obtain it without a prescription in the Netherlands Zembla exposed. With a few messages via Telegram or WhatsApp you can get in touch with sellers and make an appointment with dealers.
So that works a bit the same as designer drugs or counterfeit medicines be traded. But from the research of Zembla it appears that there is now also large-scale trade in real painkillers from the regular pharmaceutical chain.
Theft ‘child’s play’
Boxes or strips of oxycodone that undercover journalists bought were new, sealed and provided with unique QR codes: very real. Zembla had its composition examined by the RIVM, which states that the medication does not differ from medicines available in a pharmacy. Dealers tell Zembla that the heavy painkillers come from pharmacies: they are taken by ‘corrupt employees’.
You can go into the opiate vault dozens of times a day and no one will notice
But opiates are also stolen from hospitals, such as the HagaZiekenhuis in The Hague. An anesthetist at that hospital was arrested in December for the prolonged and large-scale suppression of morphine ampoules and the much stronger sufentanil.
According to hospital employees, theft of opiates is ‘child’s play’. “You can go into the opiate vault dozens of times a day and no one will notice.”
Oxazepam and temazepam
According to the Hague hospital, this employee was struggling with a serious addiction and took the opiates with him for his own use. HagaZiekenhuis has terminated the employment contract with this employee and, after follow-up questions from Zemblareported to the police. The case was later also reported to the IGJ.
Research agency Hoffmann was also called in to gain a good picture of the procedures surrounding stock management and registration of opiates.
This is not the first time that HagaZiekenhuis has had to deal with stealing employees. Be in 2024 several nurses fired after they downed stress- and anxiety-reducing benzodiazepines such as oxazepam and temazepam from the obstetrics department. Standing just before that an ex-hospital employee still in court for drug theft.
Fictional identity
Several healthcare institutions appear to be concerned about theft. For example, Hoffmann receives many more requests from healthcare institutions to examine their own procedures than before, says Ron Nieuwendijk to Zembla. “At first there were ten to twenty a year, last year at least fifty or sixty.”
The IGJ is conducting an investigation into ‘vulnerabilities in the legal chain’ to learn more about the trade in opiates on the black market. The Inspectorate cannot indicate exactly how large this trade is, but sees that trade is moving from websites to social media, such as Telegram.
100,000 Dutch people
But at the moment it is difficult to trace the origin of stolen opiates. That is why the IGJ wants the authority to make trial purchases with ‘a fictitious identity’. Figures from the Trimbos Institute show that at least 100,000 Dutch people use heavy opiates every year without a doctor’s prescription.
Zembla: ‘Buy painkillers on the black market’will be broadcast on Thursday evening at 9.15 pm on BNNVARA on NPO 2.
