Journalists were allowed to take a look at a drug lab on Wednesday morning that was found in a garage at a house in Oud Gastel on Tuesday. Crystal meth was made. Inside is a collection of gas bottles, a mortar tub with brown sludge and dirty freezers. ‘Meth’ or ‘ice’ can no longer be ignored, but meth labs remain rare in Brabant.
The curtains are closed. It is impossible to see whether people are inside the house on Meirstraat on the edge of Oud Gastel. They lived on their own, it is whispered. Blood splatters on the driveway recall Tuesday night’s tussle between a suspect and officer.
Not much to see from the street. A trailer with a cross car on it and one with cans and other junk obstruct the view. At the back of the garden is the garage. That’s what it’s all about. Police let the media in on Wednesday.
Dangerous
Red cylinders lie on the lawn. “With hydrogen gas,” says a police specialist. “They connect it to the kettle for the cooking process.” The stuff is dangerous with open fire from gas burners, for example. They’re inside.
The garage door is open for fresh air. A stainless steel kettle gleams in the center of the garage. “Tailor-made,” says a police expert. Behind it are two large gas cylinders, clumsily strung upright with a string.
Gunk
Baking with inscription ‘caustic soda‘ stand outside on the sidewalk. No drug lab without this raw material.
The side door to the garage has been taped up against prying eyes. Inside, tools hang on the wall, shelves with legal items such as a coffee machine. And further refrigerators with beer, zero percent. So much for the normal stuff.
Floating drug lab
The rest of the stuff is striking. Dirty freezers, a scale, a large mortar tub half-filled with brown gunk. Jerrycans with raw materials and also waste.
On the floor is a lid of a white and blue plastic container that you often see in labs. The same picture as in the floating drug lab in the old harbor of Moerdijk, four years ago this month.
The alarm bells then went off with the police, because meth was new. It turned out to be a keeper. Last year there were 105 drug labs nationwide, 15 of which were making meth. Those labs sometimes popped up, especially outside Brabant.
Constipated
Oud Gastel is therefore a bit of an exception among all those ‘classic’ labs with amphetamine, ecstasy and ghb. Maybe they are well hidden.
Because it is clear that the ‘garage lab’ in Oud Gastel mainly consists of small, legal parts, such as the centrifuges and a colander. Stuff that you lug in unnoticed. Except for the 1,000-litre barrel, the so-called IBC, in the corner of the garage. It has a caked layer of gunk on it.
Trays
Next to it, another white container with a blue lid. A specialist carefully opens the container. White crystals sparkle. “Look,” he tells his colleagues. An agent takes an infrared tester and it shows positive: crystal meth.
There are more of these types of trays, at least three. Together they alone account for a trade value of tens of thousands of euros, much more on the street and abroad. It is an export product, more expensive than cocaine, so more profitable.
After record year 2020, it was quiet in the Brabant drug industry for a while. But he seems to be picking up again, especially in the past year and a half. It is only striking that the large labs and meth labs are hardly found.
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