There are many people that come together and watch fireworks from a distance in great shows by professionals. Those shows take place in Sydney, Poland and everything in between. The people who work with these beautiful fireworks are trained and many times the ignition of the fuses is not even done by hand, but electrically. It is safe to say that that is safe, although it does go wrong once in a while. The professionals do not use illegal fireworks, but individuals in The Netherlands do sometimes.
It is remarkable that in a small country with high punishments for owning or igniting illegal fireworks there is much illegal fireworks.
Just some decades ago there was no habit of igniting fireworks yourself in The Netherlands, but as the prosperity increased it became popular, but nobody knew that the tradition was going to last so long and have big consequences. Some people think the legal stuff is too boring and buy the illegal stuff. The illegal stuff is illegal for a reason, a good reason. Illegal fireworks often contain too large amounts of explosive powder and have too short fuses. People have lost limbs and even their lives because of that. What is even more interesting is that a quarter of all firework accidents are caused by the illegal stuff. Some people would think that they are really expensive, but that is really not true, it is a misunderstanding. In really they are even cheaper than legal fireworks. Most of the times they just make noise, they explode. It is because of that more a ‘explosive’ than a ‘firework’. There are people that know this and buy it to explode things and there are people that do not know the line. Buying those dangerous rubbish is apparently very easy and cheap if you are a criminal. Although it is cheap, buying and selling it is very lucrative because it is produced so widely and close. Buying lots of them is possible with easily forge able documents for a really low price in Italy, where it is produced legally by a company named Di Blasio. It is intended for professional use only, but the majority of the produced fireworks is going to be ignited by amateurs. Often these explosives are imported through drug channels, which are ideal to import them illegally.
The problem with illegal fireworks is easily solvable by banning all fireworks ignited by amateurs and organizing firework shows. That in combination with more police surveillance should really decrease the amount of illegal fireworks by destroying the demand for them and making trade harder.
Like and read my other posts about more interesting subjects if you liked this one.
Here are some links I used to write this post:
Politie: illegaal vuurwerk komt Nederland binnen via drugslijnen
https://nos.nl/op3/artikel/2315616-de-route-van-illegaal-vuurwerk-van-fabriek-tot-garagebox.html