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The Flemish Institute for Technological Research can make cocaine unusable in 1.5 hours. This is evident from the first tests, reports Flemish Minister of Justice Zuhal Demir.
VITO was commissioned last year to design a system to immediately deactivate seized drugs. That should remove the safety risk. In October last year, seven Dutch people were stuck near the warehouse where customs stores seized cocaine before sending it to the incinerator. The armed men, almost all from the Amsterdam region, were probably planning to steal a large load of cocaine from customs.
“We have already succeeded in completely chemically degrading the cocaine in a safe way in 1.5 hours,” says Demir. “That is good news, because it means that the chemical material to degrade cocaine is freely available and that the degradation can also be done by customs personnel, without too much risk of accidents.”
Further tests will now be carried out to be able to process larger quantities. It will also be examined whether the process is possibly reversible and a cost-benefit analysis will be carried out.
“Ideally, we will also have a mobile installation that can be driven around to the place where the drugs can be degraded,” says Demir. “There is still a long road of testing to go, but we are the first to get this far.”
