“Gum Challenge on TikTok prompts US authorities to take action”

By: MRT Desk

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Belgian authorities have recently seized a batch of Easter bunnies that were made from MDMA, the raw material for ecstasy pills. While Belgium is known for its chocolate, it has become a portal for synthetic drugs that are shipped around the world. Through online orders on the “deep web,” people can order illegal drugs with just a few clicks and have them delivered to their homes.

Customs officer Pol Meuleneire started his career excited to find 10 grams of cannabis in a letter. However, now his workspace in the cargo area of Brussels airport is littered with suspicious packages, bags and bottles of illegal pills and powders. “In 2022 we arrive to almost six tons of drugs seized here at the airport,” said Florence Angelici, a spokeswoman for the federal financial service SPF.

The fake chocolate bunnies had been packaged and mailed from Belgium to a buyer in Hong Kong. Meuleneire used a handheld scanner to identify substances by their chemical fingerprint, and the screen flashed green for “caution: MDMA (Ecstasy).” One kilogram of MDMA makes 6,000 ecstasy pills, and Meuleneire had a few kilograms of the substance seized.

In addition to MDMA, other drugs have been found disguised in everyday objects or marked as legal vitamin supplements. For example, a Peppa-branded lunch box that was meant for New Zealand contained ketamine, an anesthetic misused as a recreational drug. A children’s toy chemistry set was found to contain a plastic-wrapped bag filled with methamphetamine, an illegal and addictive synthetic stimulant.

Not all of the drugs are made in Europe, however. Antwerp in Belgium is the main port of entry for cocaine into Europe from Latin American groups, but some of it is re-exported by mail to countries like Australia. Yet, the majority of synthetic drugs are manufactured in clandestine laboratories in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Customs officers use a computerized platform to select suspicious packages at the airport, and then they go to work scanning and opening them. Meuleneire’s office is decorated with strange “souvenirs” that he has found, including portraits of Jesus Christ in frames full of drugs, teddy bears full of pills and copper tubes filled with veterinary tranquilizers.

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