The setup—Mexican cooks using Dutch equipment to process chemicals from China—offered a window into the new global drug economy…Mexican cartels, which dominate drug trafficking in North America, are drawn to the Netherlands because it is a global trade nexus with sea and rail links to Asia that has long been Europe’s top manufacturer of synthetic drugs.

Piggybacking legitimate commercial channels, Mexican cartels are combining sophistication with ruthlessness to expand their reach world-wide. Their multinational drive is enabled by the advent over recent decades of highly potent synthetic drugs that don’t rely on crops or farmers and can be manufactured in compact facilities almost anywhere. Production experts instant-message instructions to overseas workers and hop the globe like factory troubleshooters in any industry.

With the U.S. drug market saturated and methamphetamine labs in Mexico already supersize, cartels that murder for market share see Europe as a new hub. The cartels are “like global corporations,” said DEA Regional Director for Europe Daniel Dodds. “If they can expand and broaden their customer base, they will.”

Mexican cartels first connected with Dutch drug smugglers in the 1990s, bringing cocaine through Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port. Cocaine remains Europe’s top illicit stimulant, but Dutch police say over the past two years surging quantities of Mexican meth have hit the Netherlands, Mexican “cooks” have arrived to teach local chemists, and Dutch technicians are honing production methods.

The Netherlands offers Mexican cartels an ideal production base because of its experienced chemists, unrivaled cargo networks and liberal attitude to drugs. Connections to labs in China supply chemicals that constantly adapt to remain legal. Dutch traffickers cultivated those links over decades as they perfected ecstasy manufacturing for party scenes in London, Berlin and New York…

Dutch officials are awakening to the impact of tolerating drug use for a long time and “allowing for too long a parallel economy to grow and become more influential,” Mr. Struijs said. “We have the characteristics of a narco-state.”

Excerpts from Valentina Pop, Cartels Are Now Cooking Chinese Chemicals in Dutch Meth Labs, WSJ, Dec. 8, 2020