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After Over a Year of Police Action, Dark Net Black Markets Still Growing
When the original Silk Road was shut down in 2013, it provided definitive evidence that federal law enforcement was targeting online black markets. Later, after the fall of Silk Road 2.0 and the Evolution Market's admins running off with their customers' money, you might have expected people to become more wary of dark net markets — but that doesn't seem to be the case. The number of products being bought and sold is up significantly since last year, and it's quadrupled since the original Silk Road fell. "The most enduring institution on the Dark Net is Agora. Founded in December 2014, amid the rubble of Silk Road's fall, Agora now accounts for 37 percent of all Dark Net product listings. It's a drug-heavy market with substantial supplies in marijuana, ecstasy, prescription drugs, and stimulants—and nearly any other drug you can imagine."
The way to "get around" the law is to change the law.
You cannot change the law without public support. One way to get public support for repeal is to show that a law is dysfunctional. If drug prohibition laws actually worked, did what they were designed to do, and had fewer bad side effects, then support for repeal would be much weaker. We are better off if people buy their drugs online, then if they get them on street corners. The only people harmed by these online markets are the drug dealers, the police, and the incarceration industry.
The exact same thing happened in the '90s with online purchasing.
At first everybody thought it was crazy. "Who would give their credit card details to people over this new fangled Internet thing?" There were legitimate businesses and total scams. But things grew and grew, and now nobody bats an eye about one click purchasing on Amazon.
I figure this will go the same way. Right now it's the wild west, but things will settle down and eventually nobody will bat an eye about spending a few doge on an impulse.
Question everything
While complete legalization has its downsides, the current drug prohibition and resulting paramilitary law enforcement response, not to mention everything else associated with the "War on Drugs" is far, far worse on so many levels. I'd go so far as to say the only way you could even remotely consider the War on Drugs as successful would be if your goal was to criminalize large swathes of the population, while putting them under a militarized, invasive police state where things like privacy and other rights are on the road to becoming a distant memory.
Yes, there would be problems with addiction, just like there are now with alcohol and tobacco. It would also be far, far less costly to deal with those than with the negative affects of drug prohibition.
The problem is, drug laws are doing exactly what the designers intended. They were intended to be public weapons against minority groups and immigrants, as well as assist in the political careers of people involved.... of which they have been extremely successful.
Do not forget another big winner, retrogressive social reformers. The war on drugs has been a powerful tool in keeping racism alive while 'proving' it is all their fault in the first place and that brown people are simply too weak willed to join polite society.