The results of the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction confirm Antwerp’s role as a hub.
The scene is found in almost all action films involving special units and a network of drug traffickers: while the police are preparing to storm their lair, the thugs get rid of them as they may narcotics in their possession. Often by the toilet box, and they end up in the sewers.
To the point of becoming completely undetectable? Not really. These fictionalized scenes for fiction are actually not very far from reality. For ten years, the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) has been monitoring European wastewater. Objective: to detect traces of drugs. Which can come from voluntary discharges – as in the movies -, but also in a more natural way, in particular via hand washing following consumption or ejected by the urine and faeces of consumers. When cleaning up a clandestine dump, residues of cocaine, heroin and other cannabis also end up in our sewers.
