A twenty-year-old Dutchman was arrested in Belgium on Friday evening with sixty bottles of laughing gas in the back of his van. The police confiscated the thirty empty and thirty full bottles of laughing gas, as well as EUR 2,315 and 3,200 balloons. The van had already been spotted and came back into the picture due to automatic number plate recognition. An intervention team stopped the driver at Willebroek, south of Antwerp, the local police reported. Laughing gas is mainly used as a drug among young people. The sale of nitrous oxide to minors has been illegal in Belgium for a year, and the cabinet is working on a total ban in the Netherlands. In addition, local prohibitions apply in both countries. (ANP)
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of 11 April 2022
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