No fewer than 3,500 drug users from Nijmegen and the surrounding area will receive a message on their mobile from the police on Monday in which help is offered to stop drugs. The phone numbers were collected from phones of arrested drug dealers.
The police and the judiciary have rolled up a large dealer network around Nijmegen in recent months. Ten suspects were arrested and large quantities of drugs seized. The drug gang acted professionally. Just about any kind of drug could be delivered at lightning speed at any time of the day.
“This organization was set up as a business. A kind of shop was run, with discount promotions for regular customers,” says Lonneke Hordijk, team chief at the police in Nijmegen. There were at least 3500 customers. The arrested drug traffickers, five of whom are still in custody, will soon be brought to trial.
Distressing situations: ‘My whole family is going to die.’
Distressing situations emerge from the app conversations between dealers and drug users. From customers who spend their last euros on drugs, because otherwise they will get withdrawal symptoms. Who has no money, asks for drugs in exchange for sex with the dealer. One woman begs a drug dealer not to sell anything to her husband: “My whole family is going to die.”
Mayor Hubert Bruls of Nijmegen says he is ‘tremendously shocked by the misery and misery’ he has read in the messages. “Drug trafficking has a devastating effect on people who become addicted.”
Users will not be prosecuted
That is why it has been decided to take a joint action by the police, the municipality and social services to offer addicted customers a way out. During the SMS bombing, they are offered help on Monday. Via the text message, you will be redirected to the website Stopmetdrugs024.nl.
The site contains stories of people who have successfully detoxed and an overview of agencies and anonymous self-help groups that drug users can go to. “We are not going to arrest or prosecute those people. We also don’t know the names behind these numbers,” said police chief Hordijk.
“We want to offer them hope,” says Bruls. “Another life is possible. We will tackle the crooks, but we want to pull customers, their victims, out of the scene.”
The East Netherlands police previously released an SMS bomb in Zwolle and Winterswijk. Then it was about a few hundred people. In Nijmegen, thousands of drug customers are addressed for the first time.
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