The police in West Brabant and Zeeland have their hands full of Flakka users, can be read in Trouw. Of the stimulating designer drug, people become aggressive, confused and unpredictable. If there are incidents, the police are the first to call. It seems that the peak of flakka use is behind us, researchers report.
The police are so busy putting out fires that the system gets stuck, see National Rapporteur Addictions Arnt Schellekens. The result: nuisance on the street. This was the reason for an investigation into the drug in the regions.
Disproportionate nuisance
Mainline Foundation, which carried out the research, spoke with 15 care providers and 47 users of the drug. These are mostly people with complex psychological problems – according to the research – who do not have a house, stable income and social network. The size of the group is not huge, but it can be locally hundreds of users.
The researchers spoke with 47 users in Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom, but also places such as Rucphen and Breda. And surrounding villages. Flakka soon causes a disproportionate nuisance, says Mainline director Machteld Busz in the newspaper.
Some of the users are homeless and comes from Eastern Europe but they could not reach them.
It cannot fully explain why the Flakka problem focuses primarily in West Brabant and Zeeland. According to Busz, this is a forgotten region where there is little care offer.
She points out that this is the same region where GHB grew up. According to the Mainline director, the group of users is also overlapping, partly it is the same people. How large the user group is that remains unclear. Sometimes dozens of local users are mentioned up to 125.
Forbidden
The director of Mainline says in the newspaper that the use of Flakka has now over its peak. But that it is waiting for a new addictive tool. Flakka is now prohibited.
According to Mainline, the biggest nuisance due to the small but very visible group of Flakka users in Zeeland and West Brabant was in the period 2022-2024. There are also reports that the number of users decreased enormously in the course of last year.
Various regional burial masters in West Brabant sent a letter letter to the cabinet about the problems at the beginning of 2024. As far as we know, there has never been an answer to that.
Zombiedrug Flakka causes a lot of nuisance: mayors demand action
Flakka use is the order of the day here: ‘They become extremely paranoids’
Extremely addictive drug Flakka destroyed Sam’s life