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Online Drug Sales Triple After Silk Road Closure, Says Report (nbcnews.com) 95

The closure of Silk Road -- a marketplace where internet users could purchase drugs and other illegal goods -- in 2013 has had little to no effect on drug sales. According to a new report from RAND, online drug sales have tripled since the site was shut down. NBC News reports: "Since then, an estimated 50 'cryptomarkets and vendor shops where vendors and buyers find each other anonymously to trade illegal drugs, new psychoactive substances, prescription drugs and other goods and services,' have emerged to fill the void, according to the report. The research, which was commissioned by the Netherlands Ministry of Security and Justice, examined data from January and found dealers in the United States had the largest market share with 35.9 percent, followed by the United Kingdom at 16.1 percent and Australia at 10.6 percent. Marijuana was the top seller in January, accounting for 33 percent of illicit drug sales online, followed by prescription medication at 19 percent and stimulants at 18 percent."
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Online Drug Sales Triple After Silk Road Closure, Says Report

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    People on various sides of various issues try not to believe it, would like not to believe it, but Markets Work. You can't stop them just by making rules against them, not without insanely powerful enforcement mechanisms..., and usually not even then.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 )

      People on various sides of various issues try not to believe it, would like not to believe it, but Markets Work. You can't stop them just by making rules against them, not without insanely powerful enforcement mechanisms..., and usually not even then.

      Well, that's certainly one creative way to describe the demand driven by physical and psychological addiction.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        the rich are terribly addicted to power and control of fellow man.

        I'd like to see a war on rich sociopaths. humanity would move up several degrees if we redistributed the weath these assholes are hoarding.

        the middle and lower classes don't have life as good and so they endulge in things that numb the pain of life.

        don't blame them. blame the ones who perpetually insist on having a lower class, and pushing us all down there, more and more over time.

        there are many wars in classist societies. the war on 'dru

        • by PRMan ( 959735 )
          France already tried this. It didn't work out too well.
        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          I second that.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by JoeMerchant ( 803320 )

          Redistributing wealth doesn't create resources.

          If we all got $1M USD tomorrow, the inflation would be... unprecedented.

          • Redistributing wealth doesn't create resources.

            No, but it takes power away from the cunts who abuse it.

            • Redistributing wealth doesn't create resources.

              No, but it takes power away from the cunts who abuse it.

              And lets new cunts abuse it in new, unpredictable, ways. Part of the beauty of "the establishment" is that they have established predicted patterns of behavior - it's not the best imaginable scenario, but it's certainly easy to imagine worse ones.

              • So, your reasoning is--don't try to fix things, better the devil you know?
                • So, your reasoning is--don't try to fix things, better the devil you know?

                  No, do try to fix things, but often better the devil you know than simple unknown chaos.

                  I'd be in favor of basic income, sufficient per-capita to afford rent and food in the boonies, and abolish all the special crawl up your business requirements of disability and need based government assistance. Every citizen starts with a monthly check they can use for whatever needs, vices, etc. they choose. Money earned on top of that is tax free to a point somewhere above poverty, whatever that is, and then taxed at

          • No, but that doesn't make redistributing wealth necessarily a bad thing. Redistribution can be used to create perverse incentives, but it can also be used to cancel out perverse incentives. The primary mechanism for mitigating negative externalities is taxation (i.e. wealth redistribution). But this wealth redistribution is correcting the market so that the true cost of things is paid by those receiving the benefit, rather than unfairly passing those costs onto others.
        • I have been saying for quite some time now that we all, the people of the world, need to take a step back and talk about what form of government we think we should have. To that end, I have created a Facebook group, The Pirate-Ninja-Zombie Party [facebook.com].
      • People on various sides of various issues try not to believe it, would like not to believe it, but Markets Work. You can't stop them just by making rules against them, not without insanely powerful enforcement mechanisms..., and usually not even then.

        Well, that's certainly one creative way to describe the demand driven by physical and psychological addiction.

        Well, markets don't care what drives the demand. I think that's kind of the OP's point.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Depends what the problems are with the addiction. Tabacco is addictive but legal and it causes all kinds of health issues over time. Addiction alone isn't the reason drugs are illegal. Alcohol's acceptance in western society is probably the greatest of hypocrisies I can think of as proof.

        Alcohol is a substantial factor in crime, mostly violent crime. There is also the risk of traffic crashes associated with its consumption.

        One of the main reasons to have some substances illegal is probably religion. The alt

      • by Anonymous Coward

        You assume that everyone buying from these sites is addicted.

        That is not the case. Many people just want a something to relax on the weekend that they cannot legally obtain because of prohibition.

      • You don't have to be addicted to drugs to want to buy drugs...

        Drugs can be a very inexpensive vacation for a couple of days.

        The problem is when it starts to interfere with other's lives.

        But even then, I am not sure I would call it a bad thing necessarily.

        People are addicted to all kinds of things and no matter what it is (exercising, world of warcraft, kids, etc) it will incur a cost on others. It is just that we are conditioned to accept the cost for some "addictions" and not others.

      • People on various sides of various issues try not to believe it, would like not to believe it, but Markets Work. You can't stop them just by making rules against them, not without insanely powerful enforcement mechanisms..., and usually not even then.

        Well, that's certainly one creative way to describe the demand driven by physical and psychological addiction.

        Except that this has nothing to do with the argument. Markets work because people demand goods, period. Their motivation for the desire is completely irrelevant. It is a fundamental principle of economics that we always want as much of a good as we can consume. Why we want it doesn't matter. You might argue that these types of drugs, driven by addiction are not actually a good, but are in fact a bad. The behavior of these markets would demonstrate otherwise.

        • People on various sides of various issues try not to believe it, would like not to believe it, but Markets Work. You can't stop them just by making rules against them, not without insanely powerful enforcement mechanisms..., and usually not even then.

          Well, that's certainly one creative way to describe the demand driven by physical and psychological addiction.

          Except that this has nothing to do with the argument. Markets work because people demand goods, period. Their motivation for the desire is completely irrelevant. It is a fundamental principle of economics that we always want as much of a good as we can consume. Why we want it doesn't matter.

          Bullshit. If that last statement were even remotely true, cigarette companies wouldn't have spent millions in R&D over the last half century to ensure their product is designed to maximize addiction. They sure as hell haven't spent millions to ensure cigarette smoke tastes like chocolate.

          You might argue that these types of drugs, driven by addiction are not actually a good, but are in fact a bad. The behavior of these markets would demonstrate otherwise.

          Uh, might argue? There's little arguing the end result of using crystal meth. Or crack cocaine. Or even a dependency to legal opiates. ALL tend to have a negative effect on the human body, and ALL are highly addic

          • "There's little arguing the end result of using crystal meth. "

            uh oh, better tell all the parents of children and adults living with ADHD who take this as a medication. (i've done both extensively, there is really no difference between meth and adderall/dexadrine).

  • Shutting down even top level targets has little to no impact?? Surely if we spend twice as much and sentence the next site runner to DOUBLE life, the online war on drugs will end in victory. -Typical drug warrior.
  • Wait until the retired start using the dark web to get prescriptions filled from 'virtual Mexico' nationwide.

    • by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2016 @06:45PM (#52680963) Journal

      Wait until the retired start using the dark web to get prescriptions filled from 'virtual Mexico' nationwide.

      They already are. Short of doing that, go to Costco and you can get medication at pretty fair prices. Unless you're getting it for free or have a $5 co-pay, Costco is the way to go.

      For example, a popular anti-cholesterol drug, Atorvastatin, at Rite-Aid is $255 for 90 pills. The same pills bought through Costco are $16.

      If that's not price gouging, I don't know what is. They must be following the Martin Shkreli pricing plan.

      • by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2016 @07:24PM (#52681191)

        And atorvastatin is a generic, formerly Lipitor. The new monopolist strategy is to game the governmental restrictions on supply to raise the US prices for drugs which are generic worldwide. This was exactly Shkreli's strategy.

        What's new is use of the dark web, heretofore the domain of meth dealers and hitman agencies. When the federosaurus fined Google half a billion dollars (yes, billion with a B) for the crime of letting Canadian pharmacies advertise low prices to US customers, they set the stage for this. Now that places like Sun City are filling up with the generation that grew up dealing on black markets for recreational drugs, it won't be long before the bridge club installs a Tor node.

      • I pay $5 for a bottle of Atorvastatin at SVC. It's only a month's supply, but still.... not as cheap as CostCo, but still pretty damn inexpensive.

        • I pay $5 for a bottle of Atorvastatin at SVC. It's only a month's supply, but still.... not as cheap as CostCo, but still pretty damn inexpensive.

          That's a good price. What's SVC, and is that with a copay or their actual price?

  • Shocking! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TsuruchiBrian ( 2731979 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2016 @06:35PM (#52680911)
    Who could have ever imagined that this could happen. Remember when we shut down Pirate Bay and completely stopped all copyright infringement? Oh wait, we just spawned hundreds more torrent sites, and even though kickass torrents was just taken down, pirate bay is actually back up again... What a giant waste of money.
    • But see, it makes them look like they're doing something.

      "We're stopping drug trafficking. Just look at these sites that we've closed! But we need more money to continue to fight drug traffickers, because don't you want your kids to be safe?"

      And hell, the RIAA doesn't want all movie piracy to go away. If it did, they'd have no justification for some of the shit that they pull. They just want the 'easy to acquire' piracy to go away.

  • by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2016 @06:47PM (#52680969) Journal

    "According to a new report from RAND, online drug sales have tripled since the site was shut down. NBC News reports"

    Who could have seen that coming? I mean, besides EVERYONE.

  • by MrKaos ( 858439 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2016 @06:58PM (#52681027) Journal

    It causes less deaths than tobacco and alcohol and prohibition of it is just another form of social control. The absurdity of the 'house of cards' that prohibits it has more negative effects on society than the plant has ever caused and that's before we start looking at the plethora of medical benefits it has.

    Take marijuana off the black market and the funding for many other criminal operations will dry up.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Actually, it causes less death, pain and suffering and economic damage than fat and sugar, two completely uncontrolled substances. There is no rationality behind the "war on drugs", just a deep and repulsive desire to control others.

    • Take marijuana off the black market and the funding for many other criminal operations will dry up.

      I wonder to what extent this is true, I would think that the money lies in powdered drugs like cocaine and heroin. It's very common for suppliers to cut their product to increase profit. You can't really do that with marijuana unless you do something like spray it with sugar water. It's also incredibly easy to grow a plant in a small space with mail-order seeds, you can't do that with a lot of other recreational drugs.

      I think these dark markets are a great development as they take away the risk of viole

  • well.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10, 2016 @07:02PM (#52681043)

    the people who are "fighting" the "war on drugs" don't actually want to "win"
    Think about it

  • ... Said "Just say no to drugs". Why is it not working? Oh, the problem is more complex than the over simplified political drivel. Treatment and education is much more difficult to implement than incarceration, albeit cheaper and less profitable ...
  • You can kill Silk Road, but you can't kill the IDEA of Silk Road. That's the real reason for the increase. Once people learn about the 'dark web' and how to use bitcoins to buy stuff on it, shutting down an individual site doesn't matter much, and every shutdown gets major publicity which turns more people on to the dark web.

  • Apparently, from what I heard, they just drop the illegal drugs in the mail. You know, like the US postal service. What the hell. When I asked someone why they don't have drug-sniffing dogs, they said it's an unreasonable search and seizure amendment thing. BULLSHIT IT IS. They're at airports. They're at ports. They're everywhere! Neither are considered completely US soil sort of but still. Looking at the outside of a car during a traffic stop is legal. A dog sniffing the outside of a package for co
    • by sjames ( 1099 ) on Thursday August 11, 2016 @02:49AM (#52682793) Homepage Journal

      So what's your address. I'll anonymously send you a free sample by mail. Boy are you going to have fun when they execute that no knock warrant!

      The real problem is that everything that touches money smells like drugs these days. They'll be ripping open birthday cards to grandkids all day long.

      The other problem is they would catch far too many of the wrong drug users. Wall Street and Hollywood would be empty wastelands, for example.

    • I don't know who you asked, but it sure couldn't have been an actual postal inspector. It's mainly a question of resources; they absolutely do use drug dogs, and x-rays look for signs of drugs too. But it's mainly focused on packages arriving from overseas. That level of inspection of domestic mail is well beyond current funding because of the volume. According to, um, people, maybe 5% of packages from overseas get intercepted in the US? Vacuum sealed or not. Postal inspectors on occasion will intercept dom
    • Why the hell are they not doing this for drugs?!

      For the same reason they're still carrying junk mail even though it's destructive to the environment upon which we all depend. If they stop it, they will go out of business. Do you have any idea how many tons of drugs are in the mail at any given time? That's a lot of revenue.

  • While much less than 1% of the (at least American) population abuses "illicit" drugs (at least according to consistent U.S. government usage statistics combined with the Institute of Medicine's dependency rates table), literally millions of non-violent (so sanely innocent) lives have been demonstrably ruined to varying degrees (including horrific and even deadly ones) by Certain Drug Prohibition (if you will) – the 'bigger and badder' sequel to Alcohol Prohibition, which "mysteriously" required a fede

    • While much less than 1% of the (at least American) population abuses "illicit" drugs (at least according to consistent U.S. government usage statistics combined with the Institute of Medicine's dependency rates table)

      HAHAHAHHAHAHAAHHAHAH

      Marijuana is an "illicit" drug and vastly more than 1% of the population of the US is using it. The rest of your comment is surely as ignorant, so I shall skip it. FYI, over ten percent of Americans admit to using it "regularly", and that's just the group that's willing to say it in a survey. You have literally no idea what you are on about. Unless you actually meant to use "abuse" in the real sense, and not the bullshit legal PR sense... which I doubt

      • Use is distinct from abuse.

        In addition to literally no experimental science confirming the contrary (you pathetic jackass), even the Controlled Substances Act (your terrible reply suggests that you probably don't even know what that is, so it's basically the judicial basis for Certain Drug Prohibition) confirms that distinction by stating the most dangerous drugs have a "high potential for abuse".

        Everything I carefully wrote is factual, but your hideous reply is the kind of brainless nonsense pressed into y

  • Has to stop. All prohibition does is make cartels billions. That's all it fucking does. People who want it still get it, end-of-fucking-story. Stop worrying about what adults put in their own bodies and start fucking worrying about the sinking ship you're on.
  • RAND generally doesn't make stuff up, and I haven't read the report yet, but my knee-jerk reaction is that these can't be known with any ballpark accuracy in anything approaching a short term.
  • The best way to reduce profits and insentive from drug sales? Legalize them, regulate them, and sell them like nicotine and alcohol.

    Druglords can't compete with Walmart and thousands of liquor stores....

  • Just as the internet does, the drug trade routes round blockages. Fail to provide a legal alternative that is at least as convenient and inexpensive as the $300bn/yr worldwide industry run by organised crime, and, de facto, you give them a monopoly in a lucrative business. Only a safe, convenient legal alternative can deprive them of that market, aside from possibly a worldwide police state on a scale that would make 1984 look like a teddy bears' tea party.

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