"the largest market" always reminds me of "Bin Ladens right hand". Obviously the next one becomes the largest, but nevertheless it's like they kill at least one of those markets a month.
Probably legalizing weed would stop most of that more effectively than all those police operations after month of preparation.
So, let's just legalize them all and hope that people will use them responsibly.
As a German, I can, with no problem whatsoever, go into the next supermarket and buy enough alcohol and cigarettes to severly hurt myself. No one gives a shit, probably because the state earns money when I do so.
Either we find (all) drugs bad, or we stop being such liars in regards to this.
From my experience talking to the people whose job it is to provide support and services to those who abuse substances. Most experts in substance abuse normally say Alcohol is the worst of all the substances. With many stating, it causes more havoc in families on scale than heroin. More people die because of Alcohol, not just from drinking it but from drink drivers, drunken fights, etc. The general violence caused by it is more than any other drug. The amount of families dealing with alcohol abuse with their family is more than any other substance. Drugs like heroin cause crime problems and family problems not because of what the drug does but because of the cost of the drug. It generally causes lots of petty crimes instead of murder, rape, etc.
But note that all those statement are about the amount of harm in an environment where alcohol is legal, cheaply available in every supermarket, widely advertized, and its consumption socially accepted, even expected.
Can you really say in good conscience that other drugs wouldn't be worse if they became equally ubiquitous?
A UK study led by a panel of experts analyzed a number of recreational drugs and evaluated them across 16 different criteria.
Alcohol was one of the most dangerous drugs and was unique in that it was the only drug that posed more risk to society than it did for the actual user.
This is of course, not definitive proof of the parents assertions but the findings do lend evidence to it.
Meth addiction can also really mess with sex drives. In college I had a friend who was a social worker and she said that with the growing meth usage meant increased child sex abuse, basically due to parents getting high and then messing with their own kids. This is secondhand, but she was clearly disturbed by what was an increasingly prevalent issue in our college town.
Yes. If they were as widely available, you would be able to know what you're buying, how much and hopefully how to apply it as safely as possible. Having drugs being illegal make them stronger, as they have to be transported in secret, and create derivative drugs to fill lower price ranges for long term addicts, such as crack and oxy.
> Yes. If they were as widely available, you would be able to know what you're buying, how much and hopefully how to apply it as safely as possible.
Knowing and doing are two different things. Yes, you'd get fewer accidental overdoses from people getting stronger stuff than they thought. But you'd get more (possibly a lot more) people overdosing from chasing a high despite having built a tolerance, or from doing crazy shit while high, and drug psychoses.
> Having drugs being illegal make them stronger, as they have to be transported in secret, and create derivative drugs to fill lower price ranges for long term addicts, such as crack and oxy.
And with full legalization, you'd have billions of advertizing dollars invested into marketing and research departments by companies trying to convince people to get high from their brand.
Remember, I am not arguing for the status quo or against some degree of decriminalization. I am arguing that the larger observed harm caused by alcohol is not useful evidence that illegal drugs are inherently less dangerous than alcohol.
> And with full legalization, you'd have billions of advertizing dollars invested into marketing and research departments by companies trying to convince people to get high from their brand.
Legal competition is also pushing the THC levels up. The THC levels are definitely not going in a downward trend in legalized states like Oregon, Washington or California. Flower you can easily find 30+% levels of THC and with things like hash and other derivative concentrates you can find over 90% purity.
That's kind of a minimal measure, and already implemented to some degree in many places. Its effects are limited, and it's a cat and mouse game because there are so many subtle ways to advertise.
These are all just speculations - we can take a stance we prefer and expand it ad infinitum. Kind of pointless.
Ie I am pro legalization, and I can't imagine if society had proper education and precise dosing people would go and overdose frequently. Do you often see people who decide to drink 2 litres of vodka in one setting? We all know how bad idea it is without the need to walk that path. Also alcohol is one of few (if not the only) drug that actively increases aggressiveness in consumers.
Its proven numerous times all over the world that legal marihuana pushes away worse addictions, lowers the crime. Even ignoring the tiny details of bringing benefits to consumers (select of various strengths and non-harmful methods of application), bringing benefits to the state (taxation, control over what folks consume) and overall society - taking away massive source of income for organized crime.
At this point it just doesn't make any sense for a rational society to have weed illegal. Shooting in its own foot, ignoring reality of humans and all that.
Psychedelics is another group where at least active research in treatment of various psychiatric disorders should be actively encouraged by state. Potential is massive, by far the best area for improvement in otherwise pretty stale domain of medical drugs development (unless you consider drugging into oblivion anybody with issues with valium et co, which basically no expert does).
> Can you really say in good conscience that other drugs wouldn't be worse if they became equally ubiquitous?
I'm sure that in general people on weed, shrooms, DMT or MDMA are much much less prone to violent aggression and destructive behaviour than drunk people. I'm also sure all of these but the last do much less (if any) harm to your health than alcohol does.
The only drugs I know which can be considered as or more dangerous than alcohol are opioids (except kratom - it's considered opioid but is harmless unless you consume huge amounts regularly for too long), cocaine (if taken chronically), meth (if abused, can change life for good if used properly to treat severe ADHD cases) and bromo-dragonfly. LSD probably is dangerous for people who are borderline crazy - psychos may become more violent after taking it.
Ahem. A couple addendums, if I may:
LSD has no measurable long term side effects - the myth that it makes people go crazy came out of the fact that our can make you feel crazy.
Kratom is not an opioid. to qualify as an opioid, you must be derived from opium.
Cocaine is not nearly as dangerous as alcohol. It is, perhaps, easier to indulge in cocaine to excess, but people on it are not nearly as likely to do things that will kill them. take a look at DUI vs DWI deaths. Also, long term alcohol abuse is more toxic than long term cocaine use.
Generally, though, you're kind of on the right track. Alcohol is the absolute worst. I might also add to the conversation that making something illegal doesn't reduce it's use.
And too much openness may actually make some of violent people more dangerous - they may just become even more open to violence if they have been thinking in that direction already.
One of the core dilemmas to me in this argument is that the way we do it now exports the problem to others who have less resources to deal with the impact. Countries breaking, millions in jail, hundred billion $ spent etc. [1]
For the most part, yes. Lots of the harm comes from the fact they're not legal and cheaply available. For example, heroin, I would say nearly all the harm comes from the fact it's not legal. Overdoses are prevented because they can happen in safe places where people will notice. I've even been told of a story where people thought someone was having an overdose and they were told to go home because they couldn't risk calling an ambulance, I was told this story by one of the people telling the person to go home, so I believe it. The crime that comes from heroin comes from people trying to make money to buy heroin. Considering tobacco is more addictive, and we have way less crime to buy tobacco, it seems logical to assume crime would drop if drug addicts didn't have to spend 20-30 a day on drugs. Then you have the violence and anti-social behaviour which for most drugs is non-existent.
" I would say nearly all the harm comes from the fact it's not legal"
Wow, you're not using your imagination well enough to recognize how ubiquitously widespread opioid addiction would be were it integrated into our coffee, soft-drinks, an aperatif with dinner etc.. It would be a massive, ongoing public health crisis.
Combined with the fact that the effect quickly erodes, that users want ever more aggressive substitutes like Fentanyl, it almost guarantees the inevitable OD.
Blaming the 'harm' on systems literally trying to stop the promulgation of what arguably is actually poison ... is a leap in logic.
Tobacco is similarly additive, but it obviously has a completely different set of health effects.
Finally - if Tobacco is really in the same category of addictivity, then ironically, you've made an argument that we really should shut down the opioid industry hard, because while quitting smoking is difficult, it's not existentially hard and the resulting withdrawal does not require medical attention or anything on the scale of 'Trainspotting withdrawal'.
An acquaintance in Prison indicated they call the heroin addicts zombies, because they bang on the doors and yell 3 times a day as they receive their poison, which is slowly killing them. I'd argue that incarcerating people and slowly killing them is a strange punishment for those wanting to 'reduce harm' whereupon the logical thing for their health would be to make sure they had absolutely no access and an opportunity to dry out. I hope that in 50 year we look back on 'free heroin' like lobotomies or shock therapy.
Humans have some control of our faculties and must overcome impulses of all kind - facilitating the total degradation of that control system by administering poison is definitely a form of torture. I'd rather be waterboarded.
> Wow, you're not using your imagination well enough to recognize how ubiquitously widespread opioid addiction would be were it integrated into our coffee, soft-drinks, an aperatif with dinner etc.. It would be a massive, ongoing public health crisis.
That would never happen. People literally wouldn't buy the products enmass because they don't want to sit around drooping all day.
> Finally - if Tobacco is really in the same category of addictivity, then ironically, you've made an argument that we really should shut down the opioid industry hard, because while quitting smoking is difficult, it's not existentially hard and the resulting withdrawal does not require medical attention or anything on the scale of 'Trainspotting withdrawal'.
Everyone seems to be thinking about how bad the withdrawal is and not how long the addiction lasts. The addiction to heroin and many other substances is over in days and weeks. Tobacco as any former smoker who has successful quit will tell you, you have cravings for months, not constant but enough that it's a thing for quite a while.
> An acquaintance in Prison indicated they call the heroin addicts zombies, because they bang on the doors and yell 3 times a day as they receive their poison, which is slowly killing them. I'd argue that incarcerating people and slowly killing them is a strange punishment for those wanting to 'reduce harm' whereupon the logical thing for their health would be to make sure they had absolutely no access and an opportunity to dry out. I hope that in 50 year we look back on 'free heroin' like lobotomies or shock therapy.
You should look into how Portugal has dealt with the drug problem. The free heroin isn't the issue, it's the lack of other support systems to get them off the heroin. Prison is not a place for support.
"wouldn't buy the products the products enmass because they don't want to sit around drooping all day."
Yes they would (!) and we already know why: it's extremely addictive.
We have ample evidence from the ongoing Opioid Crisis that people who get 'too many pills' from an operation can and do become very addicted and 'do it all day'.
Have a look here [1] from the Economist.
What does that look like? It looks like 'COVID explosion' doesn't it?
And consider that we already have restrictions in place for Heroin, what would that 'R0/R1' (aka transmissible social disease) look like without restrictions? It would look like COVID 'without social distancing' aka disaster.
This is happening to Soccer Moms and Patent Lawyers.
And you must be aware that this isn't about 'being high' it's 'addiction servicing' whereby they need the fix to maintain a degree of normalcy.
'Opioids at the Gas Station Checkout' would devolve any society into 'World War Z' within a few months. Only a small fraction of the population affected would overwhelm the medical system.
> We have ample evidence from the ongoing Opioid Crisis that people who get 'too many pills' from an operation can and do become very addicted and 'do it all day'.
That's kind of different. So that's people who start taking them for medical reasons and become addicted during the course of taking them for medical reasons. This wasn't they decided to start taking them for fun. This also seems to be mainly an issue in the US as other countries doctors don't hand out these pills that often due to nature of them.
To understand what heroin usage is like you can watch a few seconds of this video that I have at the correct time https://youtu.be/17TbF6n4jI0?t=459. While it's Valium and not heroin trust me that is how heroin addicts act while on heoroin too.
Heroin has been legal repeatedly throughout time. It never brought the world down before.
The thing that caused the opioid crisis was doctors and Purdue pharma. Some folks are bad at handling addictive substances, and they were prescribed these things.
> Lots of the harm comes from the fact they're not legal and cheaply available.
I fully agree with this.
> For example, heroin, I would say nearly all the harm comes from the fact it's not legal. Overdoses are prevented because they can happen in safe places where people will notice.
Even if that is true, the harm that does not come from the fact that it's illegal would be magnified a hundredfold if it became as widespread as alcohol (which is, please keep that in mind, the scenario I was talking about). That's not hyperbole: Accodding to the European Drug Report 2018 (https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/8585/...), the prevalence of injecting drugs (chiefly heroin) is between 0 and 0.9%, which consumption of alcohol is pretty damn near 100%.
> Considering tobacco is more addictive, and we have way less crime to buy tobacco, it seems logical to assume crime would drop if drug addicts didn't have to spend 20-30 a day on drugs. Then you have the violence and anti-social behaviour which for most drugs is non-existent.
> Even if that is true, the harm that does not come from the fact that it's illegal would be magnified a hundredfold if it became as widespread as alcohol (which is, please keep that in mind, the scenario I was talking about). That's not hyperbole: Accodding to the European Drug Report 2018 (https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/8585/...), the prevalence of injecting drugs (chiefly heroin) is between 0 and 0.9%, which consumption of alcohol is pretty damn near 100%.
With heroin specifically the increase would be nowhere near what alcohol is. Heroin is not a party drug while alcohol is. Cocaine, Meth, and MDMA I would expect to see increase in usage for the party scene but heroin specifically wouldn't see that increase, it would a small increase at first but overall that would go down. Portugal has shown that if you legalise the drug and make it a health issue you then get access to the addicts and you can help them. This means while more people will take it, the number of concurrent users will be lower because the number of people coming off it will be higher.
> Even if that is not exaggerated (which I strongly supect it is)
I'm pretty sure there was a study somewhere but I am lazy. But 1 thing I can tell you, every heroin addict I've met and talked with about the addiction of different things, I've met lots, has said they found tobacco harder to give up than heroin. Heroin it seems has a shorter withdrawal period than tobacco, so once you're over the hump you're for the most part fine. With tobacco from experience, it took weeks to stop taking nicotine gum and months for the cravings to go away.
Those are envoirmental harm. I've heard heroin is healthier than alcohol but that's just some random heroin addicts so I take that with a grain of salt.
> Heroin is not a party drug while alcohol is. Cocaine, Meth, and MDMA I would expect to see increase in usage for the party scene but heroin specifically wouldn't see that increase, it would a small increase at first but overall that would go down.
Given how strong the heroin high is and how quickly and strongly physical addiction is, I would not be so sure about that.
> Portugal has shown that if you legalise the drug and make it a health issue
Portugal has not, in fact, legalised any previously illegal drug, or even fully decriminalized it. Not even cannabis.
> Given how strong the heroin high is and how quickly and strongly physical addiction is, I would not be so sure about that.
Have taken the drug and seen countless addicts, I can be sure on that.
> Portugal has not, in fact, legalised any previously illegal drug, or even fully decriminalized it. Not even cannabis.
OK, but they did make it a health matter instead of criminal matter. The fact the power is no longer in the criminal justice system means it's decriminalised.
err. have you heard about the opioid crisis? that stuff is to heroin like beer is to vodka. it's the same shit. waaaaaaay more people take opioids than just the heroin users, but there's all part of the same thing. it's the same molecule
But the harm is categorical. Cheap heroin might reduce the impact of crime/family issues, but what about the health of individuals? We'd be back to people wasting away in crack dens.
> Overdoses are prevented because they can happen in safe places where people will notice
what kind of places? If you become so addicted that overdose is likely, where would you be welcome?
Making something illegal doesn't mean it automatically becomes socially acceptable; piss-stained street drunks don't attract lots of caretakers.
It feels like your assuming that people will be able to manage their addictions, and remain functional - I'm not sure this is realistic. Even mildly addictive substances can really wreck peoples ability to function.
Can you provide a source that suggests: "tobacco is more addictive [than heroin]"?
Because we have data to back this up.
Countries like the Netherlands or Portugal have was fewer OD deaths than countries where a hard drugs use is more punished.
It's not so much it stops them but saving their life if they have one. If you see someone overdosing from heroin and intervene the person can live. Whereas, if they're sat alone in some house they'll die. Saferooms are about watching them and making sure they get medical treatment if needed. But then there is also the purity issue someone else mentioned.
Known purity, quality control, known quantity. If you actually know how much it’ll take you to get high you’re not going to overdose because you coverage got a stronger than average batch. You certainly aren’t going to get fentanyl sold as heroin.
Can't reply directly to SirSourdough because of thread limits.
>I don't think this really address the point though. Alcohol is sold with known purity, quality, and quantity. You aren't going to overdose due to an impurity.
Their argument was never that it would stop everything, only that it would help (and I agree).
How many people have you met that have gone blind from drinking "bad" alcohol? During the prohibition era, this was an actual issue people faced.
>A major decline in the risk per use massively outweighed by a huge increase in use over time due to legalization.
There is evidence that decriminalization when paired with other policies can potentially cause decreases in usage as well as a decrease in negative outcomes such as HIV transmission rates and drug deaths.
I don't think this really addresses the point though. Alcohol is sold with known purity, quality, and quantity. You aren't going to overdose due to an impurity.
Yet dangerous drinking is still very common, and alcohol causes significant strains on our society, perhaps more than any other drug. Why do we think that the situation would be different with legalizing other drugs? A major decline in the risk per use massively outweighed by a huge increase in use over time due to legalization.
if you make something illegal, you don't reduce it's use necessarily, but you do increase the harm done by pushing users into the dark. Compare the harms of alcohol abuse now to the harms of alcohol as an illicit substance during prohibition, with the explosion in organized crime that came with it. Legalizing reduced the harm.
I want rat park to be true. It's depressing that it's not been effectively replicated. That said, it's conclusions are sort of common sense; if you give people options and one of them feels better than the rest they will take it, so give them more good options. It's almost as if rats aren't subject to market forces...
And this is what is exactly wrong science. We have had a scientist in NL who claimed that people who eat red meat are more aggressive. Because she wanted it to be true.
And maybe the original researcher of Rat Park just wanted it to be true too.
Yes, cannabis is an example where evidence seems to support the idea that full legalization, while still causing some harm, is probably less harmful than criminalization, and might even overall reduce harm if it partially replaces alcohol.
But it's a bit of an outlier in that regard, among illegal drugs.
Less criminalisation inevitably means less drug harm. Any other stance can only be made in bad faith. Just look at relative harm numbers, the stats (especially at something like the EU level) are available publicly.
> Less criminalisation inevitably means less drug harm. Any other stance can only be made in bad faith.
That is in itself an extremely bad faith statement.
> Just look at relative harm numbers, the stats (especially at something like the EU level) are available publicly.
Yes, look at them. They do not support your statement because you are asserting that the corellation is basically linear, but I was talking about an (entirely hypothetical) scenario that is completely outside the data, namely full legalization.
No EU state has legalized heroin or cocaine. The poster boy for decriminalization is Portugal, but they haven't even legalized use, let alone production or distribution. They have merely turned use into an administrative offense rather than a criminal one and are providing a lot of harm-reduction services.
There is a huge difference between that and full legalization where big business spends billions on advertising to market addictive substances - which is the situation we have with alcohol that leads to a lot of harm.
At the end of the day, we have multiple points on a spectrum with related harm levels. If you can't look at that and see a reasonable approach and stance to take, then nothing can be said that will make you do so.
Also, we currently have a real life case study to learn from in Portugal though I haven't been staying up to date with the latest results on that approach with resulted in more decriminalization of drugs across the board.
Some people like to argue that "nobody punishes you for it" isn't the same as "it's okay", even though it's not clear what the difference between those is for an actual human being.
I think the crux here is that decriminalising/legalising the use of drugs such as heroin would not make them more widespread and ubiquitous. Despite being illegal they are still so very easy to access in almost all countries, and most people are well aware of the high risks associated with them. Legalising them would bring users/abusers into a more public sphere where it is far easier to access harm reduction and the state can provide it without legal complications
The laws of supply and demand would indicate otherwise.
If you make something easier to access - either by reduced price, more contact, reduced social stigma - people will consume more of it, straight up.
Think of it like a social disease that has an R0/R1 that communicates itself much like COVID.
Kids how absolutely don't know anyone who's ever done Heroin, are unlikely to ever even have the thought, let alone, try to find out 'where on earth' to buy.
If you have a group of 3 kids in school who are starting to use, the likelihood that they 'infect' other students is very high.
We force people to isolate and take certain precautions when they threaten the community with COVID, why on earth we wouldn't do the same with heroin addiction?
And of course, it's not illegal to 'have' COVID and we are sympathetic to those that have it, so there's that as well ...
the teenage users of marijuana in Amsterdam might argue against that. This sort of simple logic doesn't actually hold up in practice, because the world is complex and not simple.
If you go out of your way to tell people that "drugs are bad and will kill you", and then those people find out you lied (see: every drug PSA ever), they may be inclined to seek proof, whereas they wouldn't have bothered if it weren't taboo
> I think the crux here is that decriminalising/legalising the use of drugs such as heroin would not make them more widespread and ubiquitous.
That is a very ridiculously wrong statement.
> Despite being illegal they are still so very easy to access in almost all countries
You apparently have a pretty wide definition of "Very easy". I wouldn't have the faintest clue how to lay my hands on some heroin. Yes, I might start asking around in the vicinity of nightclubs based on hearsay that party drugs are supposedly sold there and the dealers might know someone who sells heroin. That would require navigating some scary situations quite outside my comfort zone. That's a completely different level of availability than alcohol, of which there are shelves full in every supermarket and ads plastered all over telling me how it will make me hip and attractive.
> Legalising them would bring users/abusers into a more public sphere where it is far easier to access harm reduction and the state can provide it without legal complications
You don't need legalization for that, merely decriminalization of use and possession.
I'm surprised you don't get constantly hassled by sketchy people on the street trying to sell you drugs.
Also, homeless people everywhere often know who to ask or where to go.
I hope we can agree that there's a significant difference in accessibility for something you can legally buy from the store versus something that you have to seek out illegally from random "sketchy people on the street".
Illegal production of homebrewn alcohol is a thing and has been for centuries. Raising taxes at will does not mean that everyone will, unhappily, continue to buy expensive alcohol in the store. There is a limit after which people will start to produce their own moonshine, which is less safe than whatever you buy legally. Or start drinking various chemicals that resemble alcohol. (Window cleaner is a big hit.)
The problems with War on Drugs translate neatly to any possible War on Alcohol as well: the black market will kick in once it has a good business case to exist, and all sort of problems will come with its emergence.
And yet Scandinavian countries have had great success by raising the price and limiting the availability of store-bought alcohol.
I think this is similar to some UX patterns we see in software: most people will go with the default option because it is easier. Raising the amount of effort needed for something means fewer people will end up doing it.
Finland and Sweden aren't exactly sober places. Finland also has one of the highest suicides in Europe and alcohol abuse sure plays into this. Sweden isn't a role-model either by criminalizing abuse and making alcohol expensive. It does nothing but make it a "prestige object".
> And yet Scandinavian countries have had great success by raising the price and limiting the availability of store-bought alcohol.
Great success?
1. People there still buy a lot, even at expensive prices.
2. I have never seen so much heavy consumption and problems in Southern Europe than what I saw living in Finland.
3. I had never seen people brewing their own wine in their flat in my country (not counting real wine in farms when I was a kid, of course). Youngsters wouldn't even use berries like their elders, but just sugar & yeast (bearing the suiting name of 'kilju').
4. You could sometimes illicitly buy moonshine alcohol from a car trunk on a car park, in plastic water bottles. Classy.
5. Anecdote: I remember vodka was smuggled from Russia in timber lorries (trunks were hollowed out and filled with bottles) :-D
This corresponds to my tourist experience. Compared to Italy or Spain, Finland has a lot of people with an obvious drink problem.
Maybe it is in the wine vs. vodka difference; vodka, being much more concentrated, will wreak havoc on internal organs sooner. Including brain and liver.
Not sure what you mean by "success"? In Finland at least so many people (especially from the south) regularly (pre-COVID at least) take the ferry to Estonia to buy alcohol in bulk because of the insanely high alcohol taxes. If that option didn't exist I'd expect moonshine (and/or illegal exports) to become much more common.
Folks in Norway would go to Sweden pre-COVID to buy alcohol. The in-country alcohol sales rose enough post-covid that the government is actually lowering the taxes on alcohol slightly, though whether it is enough to keep folks buying in Norway is debatable. I'd not be surprised if there wasn't a thriving black market even with all this.
A few years ago the government in Estonia raised taxes a bit too much on alcohol. The result was that Estonians started going to Latvia to buy alcohol. I believe even a lot of Finns are (or were) now buying alcohol from Latvia. Even alcohol that's made in Estonia is cheaper in Latvia.
There were some additional effects to this as well. Food is also cheaper in Latvia. Some people ended up doing a lot of their grocery shopping in Latvia as, because they were already there for be alcohol.
Politically, the Social Democrats got most of the blame for the tax increase. They had a large drop in votes in the most recent parliamentary election.
Seems like people in Nordic countries (especially when not considering Denmark) consume less alcohol than their neighbours, although the difference has been decreasing.
The problem with sin taxes is that they even further increase the divide between rich and poor.
The wealthy won't be concerned if they're spending twice as much on booze, as it's such a small fraction of their income. But the working class may be denied one of their few pleasures - even if they were perfectly capable of keeping their consumption at reasonably healthy level.
Even worse than taxing alcohol is trying reduce car use by taxing people off the roads (without significantly improving alternatives). That's taking away vast numbers of opportunities from those who need them the most.
Sure, there will be some illegally produced alcohol. The majority of the alcohol consuming public will start consuming less alcohol. So that's no reason not to tax it, is it? What you're suggesting is like saying we shouldn't forbid some random crime because people will commit it regardless.
My solution: Increase taxes on all alcoholic beverages. Make pharmacies able to sell 20% by volume alcohol mixed with water that is drinkable in non-branded, medical-looking bottles. Addicts with little money can buy that and mix it with fruit juice or whatever, and everyone else buys the expensive real stuff.
Alcohol is big business, though. Forcing pricess too high would be the end of most pubs/bars and many restaurants. And we're losing many of them already due to Covid.
If taxes were really high, I suspect that home brewing would be become far more popular, too.
What's too high? Alcohol is heavily taxed in the nordic countries with a single beer costing 10-20 dollars in a bar. A single long-drink can be 20-40 dollars. There are still plenty of bars and people getting drunk.
Yes, there is home brewing but it's not what the young kids do to have fun and get drunk.
This will only create a black market of booze. Brewing, and distilling alcohol, is a fairly easy endeavour. Policies like you've suggested, are why illicit moonshine and poitin exist.
The negative effects of alcohol aren't evenly distributed, some people are more susceptible to alcoholism than others.
I would expect weed to be the same. As such, I don't just want to know the net negative effect, I also want to know the distribution. AFAIK weed can agitate certain mental conditions - the average joe can enjoy weed, just the expense of a minority losing their mind. I might not find that acceptable.
There's also an argument that society should seek to decrease chemical over-indulgence in general, including alcohol, and maybe fat/sugar too; legalising another drug just increases the battlefront perimeter.
I agree 100%, on the condition that a substantial portion of the taxes collected are allocated explicitly for funding free public mental health and addiction treatment facilities, perhaps homeless assistance programs as well.
| So, let's just legalize them all and hope that people will use them responsibly.
Like for alcohol, I doubt that would work. Some substances are simply hard to use responsibly, some offer unique ways of escapism (especially during a lockdown), many people lack restraint. I don’t imagine the number of people dependent on substances would go down, it would probably just diversify. In the end, I think it’s very hard to predict societal outcome of such a big decision. To name a few – confused parents, drug tourism, self-medication instead of going to doctors.
In any case, we don’t have to go fully legal-as-broccoli drugs. We could start by decriminalization for well-defined amounts, by legalizing drug checking, by educating instead of fearmongering. But since we replaced the worst imaginable state representative for drugs with the second worst imaginable state representative for drugs, I doubt anything will happen here soon.
| Either we find (all) drugs bad, or we stop being such liars in regards to this.
It’s not that people are liars, most just don’t know that alcohol is among the hardest drugs out there, and fear the unknown.
I think alcohol works better as a counter-argument. In Germany, it is not only legal, but it is also legal to sell in 'bubblegum flavour party boxes', obviously aimed at children. It is legal to sell at checkout, so after a recovering alcoholic is tired out by all the shopping they can be tempted by a little bottle of vodka or whatever.
Despite this, and a social culture that revolves around drinking, the vast majority manage to avoid serious alcohol problems.
This essentially shows how responsible people are - even with a culture that makes it very easy to start, and very difficult to quit, most people manage to maintain a reasonable distance from an extremely addictive drug.
If you follow this argument along, I think if you legalized drugs, but also put some restrictions on their use (for instance, not allowing supermarkets to sell them, not allowing child-branded stuff, etc) - there's no reason to imagine the situation would not improve vis-a-vis the current one.
All this said, my preferred drug policy (for all drugs, including alcohol) would be something like a ban on their public use and sale. As somebody who used to take a lot of drugs, I have no illusions about the destabilizing influence they can have on people's lives. Alcohol is well known for being a force multiplier for pre-existing misery or mental instabillity, and I think even mild drugs, like weed, work in the same way.
This makes the assumption that the usage patterns for all drugs matches alcohol. It's more likely that alcohol simply really is not that addictive or harmful (compared to "harder" drugs like meth or cocaine).
The war on drugs is expensive, though, and most drugs don't make you wind up in the hospital. We can educate folks to try to lessen hospitalization, like ensuring purity and strength. We already do this with alcohol.
I suppose there's even environmental benefits to smoking/drinking yourself into an early grave. Think of all the resources you won't consume and CO2 you won't emit by not living those extra years
My comment is kind of glib but I recall hearing about a study in Canada decades ago that looked at this.
What they found was that smokers, on average, died early so they collected a decade or two less in pension payments. They paid tens of thousands in tobacco taxes. And when they did die, it was relatively quick and not that expensive to treat (chemotherapy). Overall, smokers were a net benefit to society.
That equation might have changed today with expensive lung cancer drugs and longer life.
I once looked into purchasing pure ethanol, for the production of a topical liniment for martial artists. The duty to be paid per litre is eye wateringly high, to the point that it constitutes almost the vast majority of the cost. I came away wondering how manufacturers make any money. I guess, by volume.
I would suggest that it is possible that some drugs are worse than others. That perhaps caffeine should be freely available but meth should be regulated or outlawed, for instance.
I do not KNOW this to be the correct I am simply asking you to consider that it could be the case that some drugs are more dangerous to people/society than others.
I do however agree that alcohol is likely extremely bad for people/societies but its sort of a cat that can't be put back in the bag as the USA showed. It escaped thousands of years ago.
Education and supervised access can strike a good balance.
Not really a recreational drug, but for instance paracetamol is mostly free of access while having a potential for severe damage on overuse, and it kinda works thanks to having someone hand over the goods with a kind warning (and not being able to buy it willy-nilly at night when you're drunk for instance)
"So, let's just legalize them all and hope that people will use them responsibly."
Same logic as... "let us not legally force face masks on people, but trust in their responsibility. Let us not control social distancing, but trust that people, especially young people, will be responsible"
... booooom, over 9000 covid cases.
Democracy assumes rational people and people with responsibility. We see now how well it all works.
Same "responsibility" applies to the free internet. It is amazing, when people are responsible and are not pushing fake news to allow demagogues and populists to rise to power.
Was it Sokrates who once said that Democracy fails because of Unmündigkeit?
I cannot find the English translation of this word.
It's not the same logic. Weed isn't a contagious disease responsible for probably the majority of last year's deaths, and if you overdose on heroin, your neighbours' grandparents won't also die of a heroin overdose. There are plenty of problems with drugs, but that ain't one.
Now, banning smoking in public, that I can get behind. I don't want none of that nasty second-hand smoke.
Well, directly there are no negative implications, but indirectly very many.
I do not want to finance health insurance for drug addicts, for example. And yes, I agree, also smoking should be banned and the health insurance limited.
Sorry, but not sorry for having a conservative stand. You _must_ accept my opinion instead of downvoting... I thought that Pluralism of Opinions is a valued concept in democracies...
> I do not want to finance health insurance for drug addicts
I do not want to finance health insurance for you. But I have a healthy understanding of risk sharing and know I am better off with more people, yourself included, in my risk pool, than with less.
> I do not want to finance health insurance for drug addicts
Rehabilitation of drug addicts is, iirc, cheaper than the policing and economic (inc. opportunity) costs they tend to otherwise cause. The health insurance system can't natively deal with this kind of thing, but a decent healthcare system supporting drug addicts would cost you less.
You already help to finance things for drug addicts, though - and provide similar things for people that aren't actually addicts but sent to treatment because they got caught with drugs. Or worse, you are paying for jail and punishment for folks that decided they wanted to do LSD twice a year. Or get high on the weekends.
Also, I do not have to accept your opinion. Not every opinion is valid nor should every opinion be considered. For example, I can ignore anti-vaccine sentiments, white nationalism, and serious flat earth bs without investigating further.
>Democracy assumes rational people and people with responsibility. We see now how well it all works.
That's got nothing to do with whether people are in a Democracy at all. It's not even to do with whether the society is individualistic or collectivist. It's more to do populist messaging and how they are spread.
That's what Oregon just did in November. Well, decriminalized small amounts for personal use. They were the first to do that with cannabis nationally in 1973 as well which eventually led to medical use then recreational legalization, then everyone else followed suite and still are. It was interesting that during the most recent campaign the only thing people and campaigns were talking about was decriminalizing hallucinogens and neglected mentioning things like fentanyl. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-12-10/...
> weed is not even close to the most purchased drug via the dark web
I can only agree on this.
Sure different parts of Germany differ in their handling of weed but I don't think anyone in Berlin bothers buying weeds from the dark web. I mean it's just way to easy to get weed from other sources, which don't require any online payment and by asking frequent weed consumers in your environment you have a better shot at getting good quality weed.
But while this is the case for weed it's much less so for other drugs, mainly due to the police being very lax on weed but less so on many other drugs.
Its also pretty trivial to grow your own weed. Stop all the cross border trafficking you want but people will still be growing pounds in their apartments a year.
Why do you say that? Anecdotally there are tons of cannabis listings, and from a quick search I found this study [0] (Fig. 3) showing cannabis was easily a plurality of drug sales on one darknet market (31%, with the next most common being dissociatives+psychadelics, which is also a broader category, at 22%).
Agree on the legalisation though. In the Netherlands at least, I find it hard to name more than a few individuals in my social group (university students from a range of studies) that aren’t recreational users of XTC/psychedelics. Having visited festivals and clubs in other European countries, I think the situation is not much different there.
It seems a bit pointless to keep spending money on hunting these markets when the market consists of such a large percentage of the population. Most people still get it through dealers aswell, delivery is quicker than ordering pizza.
More concerning are obviously the weapons, credit cards, etc. sold on these markets. Taking away the sales of drugs would probably help in that fight.
I would be so scared to be a recreational user of MDMA at this point in time, because from what I hear there is a large amount of fentanyl and other concentrated opiates floating around in the street drug supply.
This is one of the great things about the dark web marketplaces - you can order from a supplier who already has a track record of positive reviews, and every incentive to keep it that way.
>"the largest market" always reminds me of "Bin Ladens right hand".
If they're not selling guns, child abuse imagery or other extreme stuff maybe treat it as a source of intelligence rather than keep playing whack a mole?
I'm curious, that would surprise me. Maybe by weight, but I would be surprised if that were by value.
Weed is extremely difficult to send by mail, relative to most other drugs. It's large in volume, and it produces a distinct smell. You can combat that, but it's a pain, and I'm not sure how effective it is.
Compared to something like LSD, which you could easily slip into the pages of a book, and produces no recognizable smell. At least on the human spectrum, and I severely doubt drug dogs can smell it.
Yeah but most people aren't after LSD or MDMA. They will do it on occasion. Weed is something some people smoke every day, and your average Joe is more likely to try it. In regular drug dealing there is way more volume in weed.
True but please don't stop on weed, please also liberalize non-narcotic prescription medications availability to let people buy whatever they know they need without having to visit a doctor.
I agree with you on many prescriptions, but many have a legitimate need to be regulated.
Antibiotics are an obvious one. Antibiotic resistance is a real, and growing, issue. If people start popping them every time they get a sniffle, that's going to get a lot worse.
Some medications have very serious side effects, and a doctor really should vet that you're healthy enough to withstand those.
Some medications can have very severe interactions. Part of the prescription process is that their computer is supposed to alert the pharmacist if some combination of the meds you're on creates an issue.
Honestly, those few categories knock out most of the useful medications. Mental health drugs are generally safe, but self-medication isn't usually effective in those scenarios.
Ok. Let's not unschedule antibiotics. But there still are many prescription medications which are either harmless (at least not more dangerous than Tylenol is) or so specialized most of the ordinary people (who doesn't actually need them and doesn't know the relevant details) don't even know they exist. In fact Tylenol is extremely dangerous (quite easy to kill yourself with it) yet widely available and nobody seems to consider this a problem.
This wouldn't happen. Even from a pharmaceutical company's viewpoint, their regulatory body comes down on them like a ton of bricks if too many people suffer injury from their products.
So pharmaceutical companies and other medical product manufacturers manage their risk by only selling to approved suppliers, so that they don't have people randomly putting themselves at risk using their products.
It should be enough to put a clear warning on the box saying you take all the risk yourself if choose to self-prescribe and also list all the known interactions and counter-indications somewhere in the manual. This works just fine in some countries. You can't drink a chemical potentially poisonous to you after being warned and still sue the vendor like if they didn't tell you shouldn't.
As someone who works in medical devices I can tell you in the medical field it's not enough to just write on a box "If you use this incorrectly and get injured, it's not our fault"
Medical products have risk assessments a mile long for every scenario the manufacture can think of, and the mitigation for being administered on the wrong patient is often "Don't sell to non ISO-13485 approved clients"
If enough people get injured because of your product, the FDA or MHRA is going to investigate you, no matter how many disclaimers you put on your products.
I guess so, but the problem is that weed is not the only thing that is sold on these markets...
So even if legalising it would make those markets lose profits, they still have a lot of nasty things to sell -- so taking them down is still the best thing to do for the moment, IMHO.
The amount sold on these markets is tiny, however they are one of the safest ways to purchase drugs - with reviews, reputation, tests etc. Constantly interfering with the safest ways to buy drugs so people have to instead buy it from a random person in the real world with less guarantees, and more danger to everyone or from an online scammer that just popped up is not good at all.
Further, the costs of these LE operations is very high to catch some small fries. These are extremely counterproductive.
I think that's the point. As far as I understand their reasoning (although I don't agree with it), is that some people buy drugs when they are easily accessible over the internet, but wouldn't do so if they have to meet risky people in person AFK. Of course, people who want drugs will get drugs, somehow, and if it's safer, that'd be better. But they want people to move into the riskier meat-space as it's easier to keep track on people and eventually arrest them then.
It's not even remotely believable that this is anywhere near an efficient way to eventually catch people irl instead of just spending all those resources on irl operations in the first place.
The "attacker" is so bad at consistently preventing consensus generation that I find it extremely hard to believe it is an attack at all, thus it isn't related to this market bust.
An attacker would (1) send much more traffic to dirauths or find an easier/better way to disrupt the dirauths' voting, and (2) ignore the fallback dirs.
As more of the "largest darknet marketplace"s are taken down, it kinda becomes less and less impressive whenever some law enforcement agency does it.
This one seems to have decent volume by BTC and other crypto, but it's not really anything earth-shattering.
In the scheme of things, I don't see there being any major ground made in preventing people from selling dope online. It's nearly trivial to ship it anonymously and it's nearly trivial to package it and sanitize it and aside from taking the time to scan and inspect every single piece of mail, people are going to continue to want to buy drugs online.
No, they don't prevent people from buying drugs online but they sure make it less safe and more filled with bad actors by interfering with the reputational nature of them.
Which just harms consumers, who will anyway use the same method to get them. Nobody wins, state police just has some extra semi-meaningless jobs and prisons are a bit more full
Glad to see more XMR usage in these. For every market you take down, two more shall pop up. You cannot fix a demand-side problem by restricting supply. Economically, the pricing will always rise to meet the increased risk of supplying. This war cannot be won. So please just give up.
You can still be highly effective in disincentivizing behavior without completely preventing it. Enforcement raises risk, raising prices, which decreases consumption and thus the incentive to distribute. People are less likely to want to participate as a seller or buyer.
You talk a big game, but I don't think you understand the reality for people who are involved and get caught. Let me know when one of your closest friends gets arrested by the Feds and you don't get to see them for a decade plus.
Not sure I understand your argument. It seems like you are against allowing these markets to function. But then you say:
> Let me know when one of your closest friends gets arrested by the Feds and you don't get to see them for a decade plus.*
Which seems like an argument in support of GP. If we didn't make these illegal, which then increases prices and danger (only the most ruthless survive), which in turn incentivizes one of your closest friends to take the risk by getting involved in the supply side, then you wouldn't have to worry about "your closest friends gets arrested by the Feds and you don't get to see them for a decade plus."
If you're talking about demand side (i.e. your friend is a user), banning the markets won't address that problem. Sure it impacts demand, but it will never eliminate it and it only makes those sucked in all the more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, and unable to get help from law enforcement since they are committing crimes (this is the identical problem that sex workers with abusive jons and/or "pimps" often have as well).
I am opposed to allowing the markets to function, and believe the parent post is overly dismissive of the efficacy of enforcement as a deterrent.
I intended to call out the folly of their idealism - "the war cannot be won" - the Feds don't have to win a war. Every battle they win destroys the lives of the people foolish enough to be involved. Once you're in their sights it's only a matter of time before you slip up and then you're done.
The active ones with a significant number of transactions are a single digit amount typically with only a few 'bigger' ones (tho in reality still pretty small).
That doesn't give any indication of size at all. For a start "a server" isn't a standard size. That could be 20 Raspberry Pis or 20 machines equivalent to Amazon t2.2xlarge resources. Even if it was 20 Raspberry Pis, a site could handle tens of millions of transactions a year with a moderately well designed architecture.
Where does that amount come from? The article mentions 4,650 BTC and during that time the price mostly hovered around $10k. That's $85k a day in transactions and 584 transactions a day. I suspect about the same as my local supermarket.
I get how these market places are used for digital goods (malware, credit cards), but I don’t understand how people can trade physical goods on those. If they have to exchange products, they must either meet in person or use the mail, either is trackable by the authorities. I see how the seller can protect himself for local transactions. He could leave the goods hidden somewhere and tell the buyer where to go. But the buyer has to be exposed 100% of the time.
Now, goods are hidden in publicly accessible places like parks and the location is given to the customer on purchase. The customer then goes to the location and picks up the goods. This means that delivery becomes asynchronous for the merchant, he can hide a lot of product in different locations for future, not yet known, purchases. For the client the time to delivery is significantly shorter than waiting for a letter or parcel shipped by traditional means - he has the product in his hands in a matter of hours instead of days. Furthermore this method does not require for the customer to give any personally identifiable information to the merchant, which in turn doesn’t have to safeguard it anymore. Less data means less risk for everyone.
The use of dead drops also significantly reduces the risk of the merchant to be discovered by tracking within the postal system. He does not have to visit any easily to surveil post office or letter box, instead the whole public space becomes his hiding territory.
...
To prevent theft by the distribution layer, the sales layer randomly tests dead drops by tasking different members of the distribution layer with picking up product from a dead drop and hiding it somewhere else, after verification of the contents. Usually each unit of product is tagged with a piece of paper containing a unique secret word which is used to prove to the sales layer that a dead drop was found.
"""
It's worth reading the entire article for more detail, the business model is quite clever.
I’m skeptical that dead drops of items purchased on the dark net is common. It seems like too many competing factors that would make it impractical.
Your customers are limited to your immediate geographic area and those who are willing to search for their purchases. The use of cryptocurrency to make purchases is a pretty big barrier for most people and reducing your customer base even further seems like it would make the whole operation uneconomical.
Paradoxically, the purchases should be inconspicuous yet easy to find. The mention of using Bluetooth and WiFi to help guide your customers would help, but at some point you have people out in public (presumably they’re in public because private locations provide even more obstacles) looking for hidden objects. That in itself is pretty conspicuous, even with the greater public knowledge of things like geocaching and Pokémon go (your customers also risk being engaged by those people). Additionally, placing and maintaining your drop locations is conspicuous. All it takes is one person seeing you leaving an object for the bomb squad to get called in.
The idea that a seller could place multiple orders ahead of time and then activate them as required seems odd as well. Your customers are going to have to be okay with buying drugs that could be degraded from being exposed to environmental conditions if the drops are outside (placing them inside of buildings exposes both you and your customers to more scrutiny). Likewise, leaving them for extended periods of time makes it more likely for them to be discovered. You’re also limited by what you’ve previously placed. If a customer wants multiple items, they’ll have to go to multiple drop locations.
There’s also the time and expense of setting up all these drop locations. You don’t want them concentrated because that makes it more likely that your customers will be noticed, but spreading them out will reduce your profit.
Shipping through the mail obviously poses it’s own problems, but it also has a lot of advantages. Mail generally can’t be opened without a warrant, sending and receiving mail is pretty inconspicuous and it gives the buyer more plausible deniability.
The article reads more of a “maybe this is how it could be done” than a “this is how it’s actually being done”.
This is brilliant, but also raises a bunch of questions for me. Perhaps you or other readers may have the answers:
- How is collection of the product verified. In other words, a customer can say they went to the drop location and nothing was there. The seller has no way of knowing if the customer was lying or if the product was "intercepted" by chance or federal officials
- How can people making the drop be confident that authorities making controlled buys won't be able to trace them via CCTV (if there is a camera recording in that area, their identity can be determined) I suspect the normalization of face masks has helped make this somewhat easier to evade, but in normal times, the government could go to 100 drop zones used by the same seller, compile a list of all the people who have been seen near those zones in the last 6 months with facial recognition, then dig into people who have been seen in more than one of those zones. I assume these are obscure enough locations that random people won't find the drops, so a person appearing in more than one is enough to flag them as likely to be involved. But in the event these are just really good hiding places in more public locations, someone being near 3 or more of these locations is still enough to suggest involvement.
- Most of the risk still seems to be the buyer's burden; if a government official impersonates the seller, they can just wait for the person to show up to collect their package, and they'd be caught "red-handed" so to speak. I suppose the person can claim ignorance, but I don't know how good of a defense this would be.
- Sellers would be taking massive risks with bulk orders being found by the wrong party (I assume bulk orders are most of their profits). Additionally, they wouldn't really have the ability to tailor the amount to the customer for complicated orders
I wanted to reply to my own questions (let's say 1-4) with some follow-up, because I didn't realize how complex the system was until I read the linked article.
1) The article mentions the drop locations need to be places where another person stumbling upon them will be super unlikely, and which also haven't been used before (not regular, recurring locations as I assumed).
3) There is still likely a fair bit of risk to the buyer, but the writer seems to believe they can plead innocence
4) Addressed in the same as 1, and with drop locations being new every time, making more involved drops may not be as much of an issue
(2) still begs the question, people making lots of drops seem to have a lot of risk; if many controlled buys are taking place, officials can crossreference the lists of people who have been near that location. Once they identify people who make the drops they can then watch the people who are seen in many of the locations, subpoena location information from Google, etc. until they catch them in the act of making a drop or gather enough evidence to indite them. These people could then face very serious charges of conspiracy. It's not unlikely that these people could then be turned informant. Get enough surveillance on, or cooperation of the people making the drops and you can then use the same techniques to suss out the sales layer. Rinse and repeat.
Great. So because of our glorious War On Drugs, now drugs are being hidden all over the place where curious little kids are liable to find them. Can we please legalize yesterday?
I am pretty sure all mail is scanned (outer envelope) in the US (and I suspect in most countries) and the record is kept. So the police can tell after the fact what was sent to whom from which post office / collection point. I assume all it takes is a bit of CCTV to fully identify the sender.
There is no CCTV monitering a USPS drop box far from a post office. You could also address the package to your neighbor then take it off their porch after you see the USPS truck make their rounds. Or address it to a derelict property where you know no one will be home. Its trivial to mail things.
> But the buyer has to be exposed 100% of the time.
In Germany, apartments have mailboxes accessible without entering the building. Mailboxes have last names on them, we don't send mail to apartment numbers.
If you need a secure dropbox you go to a random building with some vacancies, look for an unused mailbox, change the lock (many have them on the outside as well) and put a random name on it.
Usually the buyers don't really get in trouble, either because the amounts are too small or the priorities are different. They are much more interested in the sellers and operators of the platform.
The court still needs good proof that you intended to receive the package. If they don't have proof, there isn't much for a conviction to stand on and the next instance should slap it back hard.
That's how it should be. But plenty of people have been convicted in this way, unfortunately. Plus they have probable cause to search your house which isn't much fun either.
Also, drug laws are saner than in then US (apart from cannabis legalisation) and nobody is out to get you for minor amounts of any drug. Even getting caught selling drugs will get you locked up guaranteed, if you don't pair that with criminal conspiracy.
However, buying or selling weapons is no joke here.
It's common the market, the police can't really do much about the buyer if it's delivered via postal service. You can just claim you didn't know what that package is or who ordered it.
The volume of domestic mail in most countries is huge, it's prohibitively expensive to check all packages. International packages from suspect countries (e.g. The Netherlands) might be checked more frequently. As far as I understand, in the case something is caught by customs it's possible to just deny you ever ordered anything and I doubt law enforcement or customs would bother taking it any further unless it was a huge amount, they'll incinerate it and move on.
Just address the package to a derelict propery then stop by on delivery day to scoop it off the front door. Receiving isn’t hard. I also routinely get mail from the past dozen or so tenants who had my address, so you could just use a fake addressee as well.
When USPS does randomly seize a package (such as a fake ID caught at customs) the end result is nothing happens to the receiver other than the package not arriving.
The UK's domestic postal service - Royal Mail - is far too broken to even consider screening illegal packages. They make money from posting this stuff and they're too underfunded and stagnant to address it even they wanted to.
In theory it is possible to run a bitcoin tor marketplace anonymously, but in practice, given a long enough timeline, mistakes will happen and chances of getting caught approach 100%. I wonder what mistakes were made here.
Why would someone be using a VPN if they're using tor for the market? Why would a VPN offer any protection at all? If you're using a VPN and "SSH into one of the servers that they are already watching", then a VPN isn't going to provide anonymity.
A VPN would not cover up the fact that you used Tor at all. Assuming you're actually utilizing SSH through sock proxies and using a VPN, you can still be fingerprinted and tracked. There are already existing databases that have established profiles for various sites. Your ISP can easily see if you're connecting to one of those sites based on the type of data you're sending. Regardless if it's encrypted.
On the other hand, if you normally do this but forget to one time, it doesn't mean you're automatically exposed. It simply means that if anyone is currently attempting to find you and have an exploit that will actually work on you, then they will be getting you directly instead of your VPN. However, even if you had a VPN, if it's a government agency then generally speaking they will be able to find you anyways. A VPN doesn't "hide" you. It's not meant to.
If you want to stay anonymous, there are several methods that can be utilized. The most obvious one is not connecting to the internet from your own home. Use the Starbucks WiFi. A more clever method would be buying slave bots and using poorly secured wifi netowrks around them to hop over one. Assume VPN connections are from companies based in countries not on friendly terms with yours. Like China/U.S.
User -> RandomWifi -> VPN/SSH -> Slave -> SecondSlave/WifiHop -> VPN/SSH 2.0 -> Tor -> Market
This is a very basic set up. I would personally add more to it with other stuff, but it all depends on your threat model.
Small note. This assumes you're actually setting up your VPNs, not buying some "VPN service." I saw you wrote about being careful with VPNs and how "trustworthy" they are. I'm not sure why you would ever use a VPN service.
> User -> RandomWifi -> VPN/SSH -> Slave -> SecondSlave/WifiHop -> VPN/SSH 2.0 -> Tor -> Market
One thing I would add to the RandomWifi at starbucks is to make sure not to bring your phone as they could detect you went there if they get to find your RandomWifi starbucks location. Also make sure to change starbucks/RandomWifi location every time and for extra-paranoid reasons, maybe wear some toupee and fake moustache in case they try to get camera recording from the starbucks. I would also do most of the work from home, just run all the db/code updates from home and then sync/push the update at RandomWifi so you just need to stay there a few seconds. You don't even need to get in, just stay outside walking and click the push button from your laptop quickly. Never do it on the same hours either.
If they are able to do a deanonymization attack on the 3 hop Tor circuit why should a VPN protect you? They can just mount a similar attack on the one hop VPN.
Thus the requirement for the VPN to be trustworthy.
What that means changes on the threat model, but for this scenario we'll say a hypothetical VPN provider in a different jurisdiction that takes Monero and has good OpSec.
The reason they can do the deanonymization attack on the Tor circuit is that they have basically unlimited resources to set up nodes, and Tor is built on the assumption that the nodes are all unrelated.
If a Tor session looks like:
User -> VPN -> Tor( A -> B -> C ) -> Market
then the government could have the advantage of owning both A and B, or any other combination. That is difficult (though not impossible) to do to a VPN that they do not have jurisdiction over.
Anyone can set up a Tor node, but it's not possible to just randomly add nodes to a VPN's network, so they shouldn't be vulnerable to that (barring insecurity in other forms).
The common misconception is that you have to run the nodes to do a traffic correlation attack. It's enough to see the traffic of the nodes e.g. on a IXP or as the ISP. [0] Even if the VPN is trustworthy and adversary that is able to break Tor could most likely still sees the traffic and can do a similar attack like he did for Tor.
I'm not saying that this happened only that if you think that there is a global adversary that can break the Tor anonymity a VPN won't protect you.
Check my other reply. I don't think you understand how deanonymization attacks work. It's not by governments "owning nodes." They might sometimes run the exit node, but that's for detecting certain activity, not finding people.
Plus, you can restrict what nodes are used. It's not like the public nodes are the only ones that exist.
I'd check out Wikipedia categories for general pointers. I think it's important to highlight that internet privacy and internet anonymity are two very different things. Also take care on how the word anonymous is used. Some use the word "pseudo-anonymous" which isn't the same thing.
It'd also be helpful to first learn how routing works. Then check out different types of applications(Tor, AnoNet, ZeroNet, etc) and read up on how they implement their networks.
Also read up on how the people who ran the markets got caught (read up articles in addition to Wikipedia).
Be aware Wikipedia shouldn't be used as actual fact. Check the sources. Many editors misinterpret them, or don't even read them at all.
Exit scams are also a problem whose likelihood increases with time. Either the fed's bust in and take the user's money, or the market makers take off with the user's money, or both sides wait for the pot to get bigger.
It kinda seems like fees and taxes, but instead of paying them on every transaction the users gamble on whether they'll be the one stuck with the bill.
I'm also interested in the particular opsec failure for this iteration, I just think don't think it's the only factor.
All of the early posts by /u/darkmarket on Dread were in /d/darknetmarketsAU. Very early on other users figured out his previous handle he used as a drug vendor.
DarkMarket was plagued by repeated IP leaks of its servers, and had its servers seized in the 2019 Cyberbunker raid.
I think owners who are not security pros may be more common because when somebody knows enough and have been doing it for some time, he may realize that with all his skill he still can be owned one way or another (and he will be given long enough time and high enough incentives).
Or maybe because there are just far more amateurs than actual security pros out there?
Dream market remained online for 7 years and shut down gracefully after the administrator got tired of dealing with DDoS attacks, odds are the site earned closer to $100M even if you ignore bitcoin appreciation.
>and he will be given long enough time and high enough incentives
You only have to last a couple of years to make tens of millions, Empire Market exited the business with over $30 million after two years.
OK, your first point definitely beats mine. I guess then my point could be used against talent getting hired to help with the project? I mean they make some decent money so they could hire great people and pay them anonymously but somebody would need to accept the jail risk.
I think in reality the risk of going to jail is far lower than you might assume.
If you were worried, you could evade capture forever by just moving around with a bunch of prepaid SIM cards and a 4G modem that lets you change your IMEI. Even if the police could somehow track down your Tor connections, they'd never be able to find you in a big city.
The risk of getting caught can be eliminated almost entirely without taking any unrealistic steps, an actual security pro would be able to get away with this with ease. Perhaps this is why we haven't seen any infosec people go to jail for operating darknet markets?
Yeah, there is a huge asymmetry: a lawbreaker has limited tolerance to errors (one will suffice), a law enforcer has basically unlimited error resource.
These markets actually already exist. However, the owners are generally just cashing in and screwing everyone over for whatever crypto is currently being held.
I was thinking it sounds more like hopping to another roulette table when the one you're on is getting too hot. Complete fallacy other than a potential placebo effect that somehow encourages saner unrelated decisions.
No matter what anyone says, I believe with every fiber of my being that simple drug dealing is a victimless crime. Free people choose to purchase and consume drugs to their own detriment (benefit). All violence related to the sale of drugs is ancillary to the fact some drugs (but not others - alcohol, marijuana, caffeine for starters) are illegal.
The problem with black markets - of pretty much any kind - is that they soon attract most things illegal. A good chunk of the population would probably be OK with them only selling weed, but then you have stolen credit cards, weapons, and what not. And the more unscrupulous the seller is/becomes, the worse it gets.
It's like with small-town drug dealers. Kids seek them to purchase weed, but then after a while the dealer is trying to push other stuff on them.
If anything, the world needs to legalize a lot of drugs, properly regulate them. Keeping things illegal will only result in all things illegal being centralized, and more available to those seeking those markets.
Coming from a very small village (population around 3000), that was absolutely the case back then. The very few people that were dealing, sold everything they could sell.
Anecdotal evidence: I met someone on the road (massive city, never saw the guy again) who tried to sell me some weed. I didn't want it and he ended up gifting me a small amount.
That said, I think the gateway drug phenomenon is a ridiculous theory.
There are people who are going to try any drug they can and there are people who are going to research the subject and just do drugs they deem to be safe / not addictive.
I don't think that the gateway drug theory holds any water. With that said, I do think a lot of users end up trying harder stuff because they're with the wrong crowd.
For what it's worth - I don't use anything. But I have friends who are regular users. Some use a lot of different stuff.
I've been told that whenever cannabis (here in Europe, that's usually hashish) dries up, there's always going to be people that turn to harder stuff. Apparently after COVID hit, hashish became very difficult to get, and people started dabbling with speed, etc.
"Most things illegal", at least the violent kind (weapons, etc) is typically related to the war on drugs. If we stop the war on drugs, the demand for weapons will fall dramatically. Most violence you get in major cities is drug gangs fighting each other. The war on drugs ending would also put an end to that and their demand for weapons.
Fraud can be dealt with technical improvements. There's no reason card fraud is still a thing in today's day and age. You're telling me I can buy a ~50$ smart card, put a client certificate in it and nobody else can login as me without physically having the card but banks can't do the same? Come on.
Whatever remains then (which is going to be in much lower volume) can be dealt with later.
Nothing wrong with having that opinion. You might consider that not all humans have equal capacity for free will, and not all humans are equally able to resist addictive substances. And that someday you may be responsible for, or even love someone who is unable to help themselves. And you can still hold the idea there are no victims. Or, not. Just sayin' you might find things are more complicated IRL.
I don't want to restrict the freedom of the 99% to prevent the 1% from abusing drugs and ruining their lives, which under prohibition, they have been able to do anyway. Legalization (or at least decriminalization) would be a net-benefit to the group of people that cannot control their impulses.
I'm sorry you know people who have problems with drugs, but drugs clearly won despite their illegality.
> This isn't something all of those victims have chosen, so I'd say it isn't victimless.
In a manner of speaking, this rings hollow to my ears - a sort of platitude. I would make a counter example with depression drugs. A former colleague, lives in NY amd has his wife and daughter on anti-depressants. Upon inquiry on why they were drugged up, his response was both spine chilling and grotesque.
"They've been feeling a bit down lately. "
A medical professional saw fit to prescribe an otherwise healthy 12yr old and a healthy 34yr old anti-depressants because those drugs are legal. That was eye opening. The medical establishment is using their trust to peddle these drugs
Have you met someone taking anti-depressants then they stop?
GHB what most consider a date rape drug is also used widely by people on themselves as a... Drug like any other. Probably alcohol is the most common 'rape drug' out there.
Any store that sells knives contributes to murders. I would argue that alcohol is the biggest date rape drug by a large amount. Do you advocate banning alcohol?
Well, that's embarrassing. Thanks for educating me. I don't know how it didn't click that out of all the CNS depressants I know, only the one (Rohypnol) isn't found pleasant by people (within some dose range). Turns out I was wrong.
I remembered years ago reading, and recognizing as BS, some policeman's story about a bust of GHB dealers, implying there were no recreational uses, and that it must be intended for date-rape. Yet somehow I still believed some TV scare report in high school that having Rohypnol without a prescription could only mean it was intended for date-rape.
On a side note, I did know of recreational chloroform use. My dad is a retired anesthesiologist, and our family kind of adopted one of his closest work friends, a much older nurse anesthitist, as a surrogate third grandmother. In the old days, after a long surgical case, she would often drive home pleasantly buzzed from second-hand chloroform inhalation. In the old days, the nurse anesthetist would sit right over the patient with a stopwatch and an eye dropper full of chloroform, adding a few drops to gauze over the patient's mouth every time the patient's pulse got a bit fast.
The most common "date rape" drug (GHB) is consumed by many not for sexual violence, but for its depressive effects. I have observed several people who used it because of how it made them feel.
So again, saying drug dealers are selling drugs specifically to help rapists, is no more likely than the liquor store specifically selling to wife beaters and drunk drivers.
Now a quick question for you: are you equally for second amendment rights?
The same logic applies here IMO.
FTR: I'm in favour of 2nd amendment rights (in the US at least) but not a hardliner, so I'm mentally processing now if this goes both ways and I should agree with you. I don't think so but I'm considering it.
I'm not sure the link between the legalization of drugs argument and 2nd amendment, but yes I support the right of people to own guns. I can abide by reasonable restrictions but free people should be allowed to own firearms.
This freewill argument, you can make about a lot of things that are ultimately detrimental to society.
Some people are gullible, others ignorant, and others still desperate.
It's just not a good argument. For example, I don't want all grannies in my town to get swindled out of their property by smooth talking scammers. Your freewill argument would allow for that.
I think that is individualism taken to the extreme and is very unnatural and inhuman. As social creatures we care about others, especially because it is detrimental to us if others close to us are hurt.
But this happened in the current situation where the drugs are considered illegal, so clearly keeping drugs illegal isn't effective at preventing these occurrences, in addition to inciting violence.
Decriminalizing drugs wouldn't fully solve the problem of drug abuse either but at least it would significantly reduce the violence surrounding the field, so that's still a net win in my opinion.
How many people are hurt because of irresponsible drug use itself compared to being collateral damage as a result of the current (illegal) drug supply chain powered by gangs and violence? I bet the latter is much bigger and decriminalizing drugs would reduce that significantly.
Without getting into detailed arguments have a look into the opium wars (basically the UK forcing China to keep accepting opium imports) and the effects opium had on Chinese society. Super interesting and a case in point about how drugs - much less addictive compared to modern standards - when used at scale and widely available can destroy the fabric of society.
There is no country where drugs are legal, just some where drugs are not criminalised and I think that's a sane approach (Portugal as prime example). But to have wide and legal sale of drugs would probably destroy society.
Even if some drug is addictive and dangerous, it does not need to be banned.
Society should treat citizens as responsible adults, not as children in kindergarten requiring constant care.
Yes, some people will fail to fight with addiction, unfortunately.
I believe, eventually all drugs need to be legalized. But not all at once. It should be done very slowly.
There are legitimate cases even for addictive recreational drugs. I think of this. Suppose I'm told I'm dying of cancer in 6 months. I could take painkillers for these 6 months and dying of boredom. But instead I'd prefer to stick to cocaine and have a lot of fun.
Im pretty sure that hashish was invented and used long before it was banned. And it has its traditions of consumption and production. Does not look like a thing destroying fabtics of sociaty. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashish
if you're dealing drugs on a black market you're not paying taxes, you may be selling drugs to children, which is definitely not a victimless crime, and you're likely facilitate all other sorts of crime and money laundering.
Not to mention that some drugs are so addictive and destructive that jurisdictions have good reason to stop their distribution.
If what you are selling is illegal, there is nothing but a black market on which to sell.
There is nothing stopping the liquor store from selling alcohol to wife beaters and child abusers.
On taxes, to be honest I don't like those either, although I pay every dollar I am legally required to and actively avoid paying all taxes I can legally avoid paying. As I'm someone publicly arguing for the legalization of all drugs, my stance on that issue is not surprising.
> Not to mention that some drugs are so addictive and destructive that jurisdictions have good reason to stop their distribution.
Honestly I would rather ban videogames. I have seen many smart, hard working people whose lives have been ruined by videogames. So much wasted potential.
> Honestly I would rather ban videogames. I have seen many smart, hard working people whose lives have been ruined by videogames. So much wasted potential.
Me too, I've also seen a lot of life wasted on games. Some of it my own!
But isn't this much the same line of reasoning as with drugs? Some people just can't control it. I'm all for adults being adults and making adult choices. But clearly there's people who can't deal with games as well as drugs.
Where I grew up, you can get weed without a problem. I just somehow never thought it was worth the money, and though I had a few friends who'd buy they never got into any trouble with it.
Perhaps it's also a function of your environment what you find destructive. Like many kids, I grew up in the middle class where games would eat more time than drugs. I wonder if you are the same? There are others who grew up much more exposed to drugs and drug addiction, who maybe didn't have a computer to waste time on.
I'm also in favour of legalization, but mainly for practical reasons. We've tried making hard drugs illegal, and people aren't satisfied. Maybe try a different approach and see if there's a better balance there.
My main issue with it is that I don't really want to give the drug lords a head start on a business that we want non-criminals to run, but that's something else to thing about.
all the things you mention are regulated. At least known criminals usually are drug tested and so on, it's not perfect but there are rules and ways to reduce harm. In most countries if you have a criminal record you can't get a gun, someone who sells on the dark web can't even do a minimal amount of due diligence.
Of course you can say well screw it I don't like the rules I'm just going to sell it anyway but then really you can't be surprised if the gov. brings the hammer down on you.
I think Ross Ulbricht's sentence is too high, I'm generally not a fan of lifelong imprisonment, but he engaged in lawlessness and crime on a very large scale and that deserves punishment. If people aren't punished for breaking the rules tomorrow someone will break laws that you actually think are valuable.
Are anonymous SIM cards illegal in Germany? There are definitely some EU countries where you can buy a prepaid SIM card in a newspaper stand without presenting any ID and it is 100% legal.
In the UK (okay, not EU anymore but it was until recently) anonymous SIM cards are incredibly easy to come by. You can buy them in most corner shops, supermarkets, and petrol stations. Both big and small operators.
If you buy a SIM card from an operator's store they might ask for ID but they didn't the last time I did this (a couple of years ago).
When I last flew into the UK there were even prepaid SIM card vending machines, provided by the network operator, in the entrance/exit to the airport.
COntrast that with Switzerland, where I had to provide my passport to buy a SIM card.
In France as far as I know they are not illegal, but almost completely disappeared from physical retail, and I had to identify myself to get a prepaid SIM card from one of the major operators (Orange). 10 years ago I'd just have bought it in a supermarket, no questions asked, and the line would be alive as long as it's credited.
I wouldn't be surprised that pressure was put on operators to set barriers and make their clients jump through hoops if they try to buy anonymously.
This is what I thought was easily on top originally, I don't buy weed anymore but do enjoy hanging out on /d/opsec and the other places seeing what the vibe is. Mr White is amusingly active on forums, it's so incredibly strange when he replies to you randomly with advice. For someone who works in security there's a massive difference between all the wild uninformed speculation you'll see on the clearnet and actual cybercriminals or marketplace kingpins talking about their techniques/tactics. It's an interesting world out there, these folks have serious fucking skin in the game.
Same with hugbunter who seems to have no market affiliation but obviously knows her stuff and can clearly hack a thing or two.
Yepp, I second WHM. I'm not sure it's the largest, but it seems the most well run. Notably they only accept Monero; I wonder if that will help them stay safe from the police.
An idea: much of the time the way dark net vendors are taken down involve the IRS. Did you know that you can legally report illicit income, legally, with ostensibly no negative consequence?
>Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 8, or on Schedule C (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity.
That doesn't mean the vendors or market operator associates don't operate within IRS jurisdiction, and it also doesn't meant that the European and Australian authorities wouldn't work with the IRS to pool intelligence on organized international crime.
Its state which punishes you, and not paying taxes and
counterfeiting money is punished more than vicious murders or rapes. Cold hard viewpoint with very little human touch.
Looks like the FBI and DEA were involved as well as several other country's police agencies, with Europol acting as coordinator. Lots of money moving across countries means lots of taxes probably not being paid, hence the IRS.
I'm speculating here, but they probably asked the FBI or some US agency for help tracking crypto transactions. The IRS probably got involved by those agencies with the excuse that people may be hiding income from the illicit transactions... but also because the IRS is, besides maybe the intelligence agencies, one of the agencies with the best crypto-tracking technology and capacity in the US.
I live in Sweden. When we open a bank account we always get a bunch of questions. One of them is "Are you a US citizen?". The banks are apparently required to send the information to US.
> The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is a 2010 United States federal law requiring all non-U.S. foreign financial institutions (FFIs) to search their records for customers with indicia of a connection to the U.S., including indications in records of birth or prior residency in the U.S., or the like, and to report the assets and identities of such persons to the U.S. Department of the Treasury.[1]
I wonder if the current bull run of crypto prices gave the founder of the market a touch of FOMO and perhaps sold some of his earnings without covering his tracks properly?
> “Police in the northern city of Oldenburg ‘were able to arrest the alleged operator of the suspected world’s largest illegal marketplace on the darknet, the DarkMarket, at the weekend,’ prosecutors said in a statement,” according to Barron’s.
(with "Barron’s" linking to the Barron's article)
I'd call it a stretch to say Barron's is the original source. It's entirely possible Bitcoin Magazine just pulled a quote from the Barron's article, but I don't know journalism.
I just looked in the article and saw what it linked to.
I'm not sure I follow your point about the quotes but it's the article's own title and it doesn't appear to be misleading or linkbait, so we can probably just keep it. (From the guidelines: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.")
Probably legalizing weed would stop most of that more effectively than all those police operations after month of preparation.