Dutch police are to begin carrying out tests on confiscated drugs themselves, rather than wait for the results of research by the forensic institute NFI, the Telegraaf says on Tuesday.

Experiments with the new test have been under way in Noord-Nederland and The Hague police districts for the past few months. The new system will now be rolled out nationwide over a two-year period, the paper says.

The shift from NFI to police will reduce pressure on the forensic institute and allow suspects to be dealt with much faster, a police spokesman told the paper. For example, police will know much more quickly whether cocaine confiscated from a dealer is the real thing or ground-up aspirin.

‘Sending the drug away, analysing it and all the paperwork takes two to three weeks,’ project leader Robert van der Veer told the paper. ‘The new method, Nfident, can deal with this within a day. So you can go straight to court.’