The online illicit drug economy is booming. Here’s what people are buying.

[neversickanymore]

The online illicit drug economy is booming. Here’s what people are buying.
By Christopher Ingraham
October 3 2014

In October 2013, the FBI shut down Silk Road, a thriving online black market where, with a bit of technical know-how, you could to purchase things like illicit drugs, forged documents and weapons. Think Amazon, but for drugs and other not-so-legal things. The FBI may have hoped that shutting down Silk Road would take a bite out of illicit drug sales online. But if anything, it appears the opposite has happened.

In the past year, dozens of similar sites -- so-called "darknet" markets — have sprung up in Silk Road's place. Just before it was shut down, Silk Road, along with three similar sites, had about 18,000 drug items listed for sale — everything from marijuana to ecstasy to heroin. By April 2014 -— six months later — there were 10 darknet markets listing 32,000 drug items for sale. By August of this year there were 18 darknet marketplaces with 47,000 drug listings, according to data compiled by the Digital Citizens Alliance.

Programmer Daryl Lau wanted to quantify the transactions happening on Silk Road 2.0, currently one of the largest darknet markets. From a purely practical standpoint, he also wanted to know if it was possible to scrape data from these sites, given the complicated security protocols. After "an hour or two of coding" he had a program up and running, and he's written up what he found at his Web site.

Not knowing quite where to start, he limited his queries to nine of the most commonly-used illicit drugs, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse: cocaine, heroin, opium, amphetamines, MDMA (ecstasy), ketamine, mescaline, LSD and marijuana. Taken together, these drugs account for about 28 percent of all drug items listed on Silk Road 2.0. Prescription drugs likely account for the lion's share of the remainder. A survey of the original Silk Road's users last year found that more esoteric drugs, with names like "2C" and "NBOMe", also accounted for a substantial share of purchases.

Among the nine drugs he queried, MDMA was the most popular item by far with nearly twice as many items listed as marijuana, the second-highest. LSD, cocaine and amphetamines rounded out the top 5.

continued with chart http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...nomy-is-booming-heres-what-people-are-buying/

 

[my3rdeye]

"darknet purchasers are getting purer, safer product than they would otherwise."


Drugs are as good as the person selling them, there are people online selling crap and real life sellers who deal in quality too.

"If you buy MDMA from a vendor with a 4.9/5 rating, you can be reasonably certain you're getting quality product.By contrast, MDMA purchased on the street is often laced with potentially life-threatening adulterants."


So all those people who gave him 5 stars sent their samples to labs? Or they got it delivered fast and it felt good so they gave 5/5? People need to remember you can die from this shit and it won't surprise me at all if PMA shows up on these markets. Gobbling pills without testing based on a score on a website is insane and no different than buying it off the street. These reports also always fail to mention one of the biggest downsides, when vendors who used to be great go bad. It happens all the time, this shit is nowhere near as foolproof as it's being made to sound. It might not even be something done on purpose, the seller re supplies himself and it's not the good stuff he had before that got him all the high ratings. It's hard to maintain steady supply of quality drugs. The temptation to get cheaper product to make more money must be huge too.
They even mentioned lowering violence locally, this may be amazing to someone writing about drugs from the outside but most people who buy drugs in real life don't buy it off the street. I refuse to accept this as some sort of de facto legalization too because it isn't. IMO its just another way for white rich suburban people to personally avoid the drug war while 10 miles away it's bullets are flying nightly.

 

[ro4eva]

Clearly Hydra is involved. "Cut off one head, and two shall take its place!"

Captain America has some work left to do.

 

[paranoid android]

Who the fuck buys E pills and most of all Cocaine off these sites? It's not like anyone with any connections at all are going to have a hard time getting coke and as for MDMA id sure as fuck want to get it tested before i took it. I have never bought anything off sites like these (cause it's illegal and all and i am a very law abiding citizen) but id venture to guess you are just as likely to get ripped off on these sites as buying from some small timer in a club.

But was the government really stupid enough to think that shutting down these sites would stop the online illegal drug trade? If they are they did they are dumber then i thought. As long as their is demand there will be a supply end of. Basic economics really.

 

[slimvictor]

cause it's illegal and all and i am a very law abiding citizen

Thank you for this.
I needed to relax today, as it is the first day with a new class, and this helped. :D

(Note to NSA, MI-5, etc: this is a joke. I actually have never met p.a. in real life, and I know nothing about whether he/she obeys the law.)

 

[ro4eva]

Who the fuck buys E pills and most of all Cocaine off these sites? It's not like anyone with any connections at all are going to have a hard time getting coke and as for MDMA id sure as fuck want to get it tested before i took it.

I was thinking the same thing. Let's just say I was very wrong - maybe my goldfish got lucky.

I have never bought anything off sites like these (cause it's illegal and all and i am a very law abiding citizen) but id venture to guess you are just as likely to get ripped off on these sites as buying from some small timer in a club.

My hands are so free of victimless dirt that Steven Harper would most certainly blush, I'm sure.

But was the government really stupid enough to think that shutting down these sites would stop the online illegal drug trade? If they are they did they are dumber then i thought. As long as their is demand there will be a supply end of. Basic economics really.

Space cadets.

"Duhyeee!"

 

[Jabberwocky]

I was surprised to find myself, but many more than I had suspected among those I've met have used silkroad to sustain everything from high quality dope runs to getting good quality mdma to ket and viagra. Now, imo, stupid place to get viagra, but whatever... Like I said I was surprised, but I've come to learn that these sites do actually play a part in the online catering system that serves connoisseurs of the finer feelings and experiences in life. I have had a dream about using another dn site to get k, but never came true. It was a good dream though, and sustains me for now.

 

[Si Dread]

I suspect that online drugs markets are less likely to vend suspicious material than street sellers. I have no personal experience with them either, but I cannot see them becoming so huge, & being the target of LE so vigorously, if there weren't at the very least a fair percentage of honest vendors using them.