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Bitcoin-Based Drug Market Silk Road Thriving With $2 Million In Monthly Sales
Sparrowvsrevolution writes "Every day or so of the last six months, Carnegie Mellon computer security professor Nicolas Christin has crawled and scraped Silk Road, the Tor- and Bitcoin-based underground online market for illegal drug sales. Now Christin has released a paper (PDF) on his findings, which show that the site's business is booming: its number of sellers, who offer everything from cocaine to ecstasy, has jumped from around 300 in February to more than 550. Its total sales now add up to around $1.9 million a month. And its operators generate more than $6,000 a day in commissions for themselves, compared with around $2,500 in February. Most surprising, perhaps, is that buyers rate the sellers on the site as relatively trustworthy, despite the fact that no real identities are used. Close to 98% of ratings on the site are positive."
You decide.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Perhaps. But why? The war on drugs is largely about publicity and money. Making big, quick busts to show off on the evening news, and confiscating cash to use to buy police equipment (in some southern US states, there are MASSIVE police departments with practically ZERO public funding -- they fund themselves with confiscated drug cash.) You can't really confiscate bitcoin easily, and going after the buyers is going to be a lot of police effort for very little PR win and no real cash win (particularly since the buyers are located all over the globe)
Compared to the ease of snapping up kids selling drugs on the street corner, I don't think it's worth their time to go after this kind of traffic. At least not yet.
Though there aren't many countries allowing you to buy it legally, I agree that it SHOULD be legal. Let people take responsibility for their own lives and allow them to kill themselves if they wish to.
You mean like Alchohol?
Well, then you criminalize the actual CRIME - driving while impaired. You can't criminalize behavior that's not criminal. It's like saying you can't buy a car because it *might* be used in the commission of a crime. There are thousands of things that are already illegal that pretty much cover the bases - everything from reckless driving to child safety...these laws are perfectly capable of punishing real criminals instead of filling our prisons with responsible users.
Every transaction there avoids a transaction on the street that potentially includes gun violence and harm to bystanders.
Tell that to all the people on the bus that die when the bus driver wrecks the bus because he/she is high. Or the on coming car that runs into the bus because the driver of the car is high. I doubt that the person taking the drugs would necessarily be the only one to die as a result of their actions.
That anecdote would hold far more weight if not for the immense number of people killed on the roads every year by drivers who aren't high on illegal drugs.
To that end... put down the goddamn cell phone.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Here in reality, believe it or not, the medical route is actually cheaper.
Clean needle programs, access to cheap clean drugs and treating addiction as a medical problem not a criminal one is cheaper and actually works. I know it lacks that self righteous feeling, and that is a downside, but it actually works. Unlike your stupid and immoral plan.
All the while destroying other people's lives while they're high, breaking into people's homes so they can steal to feed their habit, and a whole host of other issues, including medical as their bodies get ravaged but which I have to pay for (thanks Roberts).
Nicotine is the most addictive drug known to man. But you don't generally see people breaking into homes for money to buy a pack of smokes. Why? Because it's legal, so it's cheaper and more available. You don't generally see people worrying about paying for other peoples' lung cancer either. Why? Well, partly because the people who bitch about these things tend to be smokers themselves, power of the industry lobby, etc....but there's also a big part that is IT'S LEGAL. If it's legal, you aren't going to get fired for being addicted, you aren't going to avoid seeking help for your addiction due to fear of criminal prosecution, so you're more likely to have a job and be able to take care of your own medical needs.
The problems that you cite as reasons why drugs must remain illegal are not problems caused by drugs, but problems caused by _drug prohibition_.
and allow them to kill themselves if they wish to. All the while destroying other people's lives while they're high, breaking into people's homes so they can steal to feed their habit, and a whole host of other issues, including medical as their bodies get ravaged but which I have to pay for (thanks Roberts).
Right, because A) all drug users are violent criminals who steal for a living, and B) forcing otherwise law abiding citizens to deal with career criminals in order to enjoy a mind-altering substance the government has decided, in a fair and just manner of course, ist verboten, is totally the right way to deal with it.
That, or you're spouting hyperbole based on your limited understanding of the topic.
I'll get modded down but don't care. What we need is to be more brutal. If you're found transporting drugs, like in Singapore, that's the death sentence. None of this 5 years where my tax dollars are used to give them food and shelter. Whack 'em.
Aah, how quintessentially un-American. You deserve to be modded into oblivion.
"These other people engage in an activity I know nothing about other than the fact that it's a minor inconvenience to me, and so they should be executed by the State!"
Kinda makes a person wonder what subjectively unacceptable activity you're into... Especially considering that, statistically, users of the legal drugs alcohol and tobacco kill exponentially more "innocent" people, than users of all other drugs combined.
You get rid of enough mules and the supply dries up.
Where there is demand, there will always, ALWAYS be supply. To claim otherwise is to expound an utter lack of understanding in regard to the topic of economics.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
What we need is to be more brutal.
We've tried that. We've spent billions attempting to stop drug dealers and traffickers. We've changed the laws to allow cops to break into suspected dealer's homes without knocking at 3 AM (occasionally killing innocent people who think they're being attacked by criminals and start fighting back). We've tried 3-strikes provisions so that repeat offenders are in jail forever. We've tried going to the countries where this stuff is grown and shooting people. We've tried all sorts of attempts at brutality, and none of it has led to the slightest drop in drug use or the potency of available drugs.
It's done nothing to reduce drug abuse.
I am officially gone from
Futilely attempt to ban all drugs for everyone while wasting countless amounts of taxpayer dollars in the process!
Oh, those dollars aren't being wasted... they're being very meticulously transferred by the dumpsterfull into the private prison and homeland security industries.
When I was in Thailand in 1974 there were only four drugs you couldn't buy in a pharmacy, and they were marijuana, cocaine, LSD and heroin. LSD and cocaine were completely unavailable, the place was awash with heroin and pot, and you needed no prescription for any other drug. Ecstasy might not have been invented then, but they had some amphetamines that one pill would keep you awake for two days straight. There was a salve available that was used for terminating pregnancies if the woman rubbed it on their belly button, or induce an out of body experience if you rubbed it on your temples. Quaaludes were available in pharmacies without a prescription as well.
Oddly, although the country was awash with heroin, the only heroin addicts I ran across were all GIs.
Free Martian Whores!
Pipe down Clippy!
There was once this fantastic little tea shop in a small village in Switzerland, did amazing business
They specialized in Green Teas, had varieties from all over the world, extremely good quality and extremely expensive.
You bought your tea and they gave you the choice of giving your address with a perculiar little tick box.
You don't tick the box or don't give your address and you get a lovely little bag with nicely packed green tea.
You do and a few hours later a courier delivers an Amazon package to your door (still don't know where they sourced THAT) containing a specific quantity of something else that was green.
Great little business, too bad it's gone now... Owner apparently retired a very wealthy man.
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
Please stop spouting armchair psychology.
The relationship between drugs and psychosis is complex and not completely understood... but your point-of-view is hopelessly outdated. Drug-related psychosis has little to do with the "dissolution of inhibition".
"No true Scotsman..."
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai