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The Economics of Drug Sales On the Dark Web

Posted by Soulskill on from the what's-the-exchange-rate-for-dollars-to-fear dept.

HughPickens.com writes: Allison Schrager has an interesting article about how marketplaces for contraband drugs have only existed for about four years on the dark web, but they've made inroads fast. About 10%-15% of drug users in the U.K., U.S., and Australia [are believed to have] bought drugs off the net. According to Schrager, these marketplaces look remarkably similar to normal online marketplaces. Users leave detailed reviews on the quality of a vendor's product, speed of delivery, and how secure the shipping method was. There's information on where vendors are located and where they'll ship to. Some even post their refund and exchange policies. Purchasing meth from a dealer in the Netherlands feels as familiar and mundane as buying sheets from Macy's. The dark web makes transactions safer.

All the same, there are risks that Macy's customers don't run. Because there's no legal protection for illegal purchases, the bitcoin payments sit in escrow until the goods have been delivered and both parties are satisfied. That exposes the seller to exchange-rate risk, because bitcoin is an extremely volatile currency. And there is one other big source of risk: the point where the virtual world of the dark web and the world of physical reality intersect. In other words, getting drugs delivered. Certain drugs like MDMA and LSD may move mostly online. And the web may become the preferred source for affluent users and small-time pot dealers.

53 comments

  1. Privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is a matter of privacy, not criminality.

    The world is a safer place when the government thugs are prevented from meddling in people's lives; the only reason the government is upset is that they're not getting "their" cut of the profits, and they're losing the massive political leverage they've built up for the drug war.

    And, please, don't bother with straw man arguments about Ulbricht hiring murderers, or people buying stolen credit card information. People already did those things.

    Incidentally, the fact that Bitcoin has enabled people conduct highly "illegal" commerce is as sure a sign as any that Bitcoin is both an interesting technology and a potentially lucrative investment, especially given that it has not jurisdiction—if the U.S. makes it troublesome to use Bitcoin, well, there's still the rest of the world out there.

    1. Re:Privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah right. It seems pretty well demonstrated that most people don't care about privacy of their purchases that much. They'll moan when some company has a leak or gets public attention to sharing purchasing data with other companies. But it doesn't stop a huge amount of people from buying from large online companies that make little attempt at providing privacy. People care mostly about price and convenience, and are willing to give up privacy for a small change in price. The only reason to deal with the inconvenience of systems like this are for the small minority that does actually care more than average about privacy, and for the large number of people who can't get things elsewhere because of legality issues.

    2. Re:Privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have no idea why you think your response is relevant.

  2. "about 10-15% of..." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is this like studies which confirm that 110% of male teens have viewed harcore BDSM since they were eight, taken at least five class A drugs, and slept with nineteen women between the ages of 15 and 50 (at least half of whom were passed out)?

    If a stranger asks you in person, "Have you done any of the following illegal things, and how?" then how you answer it depends on a lot more than your desire to be honest. And if it's an online survey, well, just fuck off.

    1. Re:"about 10-15% of..." by ultranova · · Score: 1

      If a stranger asks you in person, "Have you done any of the following illegal things, and how?" then how you answer it depends on a lot more than your desire to be honest. And if it's an online survey, well, just fuck off.

      Or they could simply go through the seller listings on said online markets. Multiply the amount of reviews with the list price and you get a rough lower estimate of total sales. True, some of those might be the seller astroturfing, but the site takes a cut from every sale so spamming is costly, and not worth it unless the market actually is very big.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  3. The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Even though the war on plants has been ongoing for 100 years, people are still asking... How Do I Get High?. While the illegal substances do work, legal highs are even better.

    1. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 1

      Oh please...

      You're talking about cannabis here. I agree with you, cannabis is fairly harmless, and should not be anymore illegal than tobacco is.

      But crack cocaine? Ecstasy?... Really?

      I don't give a shit that people do crack. The problem is, when crackheads start suffering withdrawal and they're too broke to buy more junk, they become robbers and break into people's homes - something potheads don't do.

      You don't really want crack to become legal do you?

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    2. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Informative

      You don't really want crack to become legal do you?

      It's not that expensive to produce, so if it were legal, there would be much less incentive to commit crimes since it would be much less expensive. The same argument applies to basically all drugs. The only reason people traffic them in spite of the often significant risk is because making them illegal has driven up the prices and the rewards are also significant.

      If you give addicts enough drugs to OD on, then eventually they will either do that or find a level of addiction which they can manage, or even improve their lives and eventually kick the habit. Regardless, for the really dangerous drugs, drug addiction tends to be a self-limiting problem if you're not busy exacerbating it. When we make them illegal we simply create vicious cycles which lead to more drug use and more crime. How does that help? The best way to reduce drug use is to treat addicts like they have a health problem, not to treat them like criminals. That helps prevent them from becoming criminals in the first place.

      How we treat criminals is also unfortunate, but probably outside the scope of this conversation — suffice to say, it's doing nothing to help us "win the war on drugs".

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by Procrasti · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How about we just lock up thieves?

      I know it sounds a bit crazy, but not all thieves are drugs users and not all drug users are thieves. Seems like we should concentrate on the actual crime and not your preconceptions and prejudices.

      I mean, we could lock up niggers too if they're gonna be black, because we know they all eventually steal from good white folks... makes about as much sense as your argument.

    4. Re: The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      But crack still is affected by the fact that it is sold only on the black market because it is illegal. If you look at supply of coca leaves, the cost of extracting the active ingredient and making a crystalline/pure form of it, crack should cost about $15 for rock the size of a softball.

      The whole argument that drug users steal or become violent or act in some other untoward manner simply because they can't obtain or pay for their drug is rendered meaningless because if it weren't for the prohibition laws, these substances would be priced precisely based on supply and demand.

      And if it weren't for the laws, the supply would more than meet demand.

    5. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by VAXcat · · Score: 2

      Eh? If crack became legal, it would cost less than a stick of gum - thus removing the motive to rob steal and kill to get money to pay for it.

      --
      There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
    6. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by c · · Score: 4, Interesting

      But crack cocaine? Ecstasy?... Really?

      I'm told that pure MDMA is actually fairly safe as illegal drugs go; the problem is with the variability in manufacturing along with mixtures and substitutions means that people using it don't really know what they're taking. Pure cocaine isn't good, but it's going to be a hell of lot healthier than crack cocaine cut with candle wax or something worse.

      When you start looking at it statistically, most of the damage "done by" illegal drugs is either going to be because of these kinds of factors as well as the fringe lifestyle that comes with being a drug user more than the actual drugs themselves.

      That's not to say that the drugs themselves are good, but a huge amount of harm would be prevented by making cheap, pure, and known-quantity supplies available to users along with a good supply of drug and mental health treatments.

      Won't happen soon, of course, but I expect to see it in my lifetime.

      --
      Log in or piss off.
    7. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obviously it's incredibly complicated, but my view on it is if the drug is addictive, and if there is a lethal dose that can be easily administered, then some type of preventative measure needs to be taken to reduce distribution through non-medical channels. Alcohol could fit into this, but you do need to work to kill yourself on it.

      The way the drug war is administered now is criminal in itself.

    8. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      but probably outside the scope of this conversation

      And definitely outside the scope of his intellect. ;)

    9. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by ultranova · · Score: 2

      How we treat criminals is also unfortunate, but probably outside the scope of this conversation â" suffice to say, it's doing nothing to help us "win the war on drugs".

      Unfortunately, treatment of criminals is very much in the scope of this conversation, because certain ways to treat them - such as private prison industry or the desire to prove one's righteousness by attacking "evil" people, such as felons - create perverse incentives to manufacture more of them. That is the mechanism behind every witch hunt, and that is what the war on drugs is now, no matter what it might have started as.

      There are people who hate and fear nothing as much as someone doing something labeled bad in their moral code and getting away with it. That's fine if "bad" means molesting kids, and not so fine if "bad" means smoking pot. And when their code is questioned some people drift towards moderation while others go to fanatical extremes to silence their own doubts. The end result is pretty much the same, whether it's called Inquisition, Al-Qaida or a SWAT team: a bunch of murderous thugs looking for new victims whose life the specific code they use to excuse their inexcusable actions lets them ruin with good conscience.

      Treatment of criminals is at the very heart of the War on Drugs because "criminal" is just the specific form the concept of subhuman takes in the US. You can't have bread and circuses without a steady stream of acceptable victims to feed to the lions, after all. And like they say, the Dark Side is the quick and easy path to power, so the powerful are only too happy to sell their souls to it - as are the weak, all too often. After that decision's made, the only thing left is deciding who'll make the most convenient sacrifice. In the US it's the criminals, in the EU refugees (historically Jews), in Islamic world infidels. Dunno about the rest of the world.

      What all this means is that the War on Drugs is a symptom, but the disease itself is something ancient and very nasty.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    10. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Citation needed.

      I'll bet you haven't counted foir profit markup, legal overhead to sue the shit out of the homeboy still cooking in his basement, government licensing fees, local healthcare taxes, administrative overhead, etc.

      The end of prohibition *should* have put the moonshiners out of business. Guess what, they're still around. Assuming that legalizing drugs will suddenly drive the criminal enterprises out of business or into legal business.... Well, naive people are naive.

    11. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pure cocaine (like medically pure) is actually supposes to be pretty safe. It's actually used (under a different name) for some medical procedures (some sort of eye surgery, to numb the eye).

      Meth is directly damaging to the brain (damages receptors) but I imagine many of the symptoms associated with crackheads are probably caused by contaminants rather than the meth itself.

    12. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by ThatsDrDangerToYou · · Score: 1

      Citation needed.

      I'll bet you haven't counted foir profit markup, legal overhead to sue the shit out of the homeboy still cooking in his basement, government licensing fees, local healthcare taxes, administrative overhead, etc.

      The end of prohibition *should* have put the moonshiners out of business. Guess what, they're still around. Assuming that legalizing drugs will suddenly drive the criminal enterprises out of business or into legal business.... Well, naive people are naive.

      No, but.. citation needed. How much moonshining going on nowadays? I really don't know, but it is pretty minimal. At best this is not a good example. Try the situation with weed in states where it is now recently legal. See also: Netherlands.

    13. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      you realize that even water has a fatal dose. and i mean from drinking, not drowning.

      nearly everyone on the planet is drinking it regularly in some form, i don't know how you can get any more addictive than that. anyone that quits dies from the withdrawal symptoms. some even mix it with their alcohol or take it with their drug of choice!

    14. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by roman_mir · · Score: 0

      I want INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM to be legal, which means every single substance under the Sun is something that every individual has the right to produce / possess without government oppressing them.

      --
      You can't handle the truth.
    15. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by Canth7 · · Score: 1

      How about we just lock up thieves?

      I know it sounds a bit crazy, but not all thieves are drugs users and not all drug users are thieves.

      Maybe not all drug users are thieves, but most addicts will eventually turn to desperate measures to obtain drugs including thievery and violence. Taking the funds that are currently used in the war on drugs and providing substance abuse assistance is likely to be far more effective than attempting to curtail the flow of drugs through other means.

    16. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by slfnflctd · · Score: 2

      > If you give addicts enough drugs to OD on, then eventually they will either do that or find a level of addiction which they can manage, or even improve their lives and eventually kick the habit.

      That's the whole issue in a nutshell.

      Ethanol has already taught us nearly everything we need to know about this. If we are legal adults not under some kind of competency-related guardianship, and we are living in a supposedly free country, there are absolutely no good reasons why we should be punished for altering our consciousnesses as we see fit. Aside from basic safety concerns (i.e. if you have electricity, building codes dictate parameters of its installation, should be the same if you have a laboratory, etc.), it's nobody's business what you do to change your brain waves in the privacy of your own home.

      Sometimes I think the conspiracy theorists are right, and our options for exploring our own minds are being limited in order to preserve the power of the elite. Honestly, though, I'm increasingly convinced it's simply yet another clusterfunk of basic human ignorance interwoven with our social structures. With time, I guess we seem to gradually smooth these things out... too much time, it sometimes seems, but oh well.

    17. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Sometimes I think the conspiracy theorists are right, and our options for exploring our own minds are being limited in order to preserve the power of the elite. Honestly, though, I'm increasingly convinced it's simply yet another clusterfunk of basic human ignorance interwoven with our social structures.

      My personal take is that money makes decisions, and the money has figured out that there's more money to be made by exploiting fear and ignorance than by caring for people's basic needs. And by money, I mean explicitly that they get to have more than the other guy, because that is specifically what they are after. Once your needs are met, and you have enough money for some entertainment, money doesn't appreciably add to your happiness in our current system anyway — unless having more money than other people is what makes you happy.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    18. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      Any product you consume that is supplied by producer unknown, of unknown quality and unknown safety is hugely risky. Be it heroin or soft drink or pharmaceuticals or chicken or bottled water. If you can not hold their feet to the legal fire the chances of suffering extreme harm are very high https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

      Someone sells me stuff that makes me sick and risks my life, damn if an anonymous tip wont make it's way to those who will be able to legally enact revenge on my anonymous behalf.

      Seriously you are attempting to deal with random unknown honest criminals (now that is crazily illogical) and not people you know and at least some what personally trust and more specifically know where they live.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    19. Re: The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ecstasy (MDMA) is significantly less harmful than crack cocaine (and actually less fatal per use event than horse riding). LSD is physically even safer and, like MDMA, has therapeutic applications.

      It's absurd that possession of these substances is illegal in pretty much every jurisdiction in the world.

    20. Re:The War On Drugs is a War On Sick People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Meth and crack are two different drugs, completely different.

      Both are actually very safe, meth causes brain damage(permanent loss of motivation, higher threshold to feel happiness), crack has no negative effects beyond the increased heart rate for 30 minutes.

  4. Dark is not Deep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They're different things. Get it right, Faildot.

    1. Re:Dark is not Deep by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 1

      Dark web == deep web == buzzwords.

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    2. Re:Dark is not Deep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      2deep4me

    3. Re:Dark is not Deep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      is a black background color required for these websites or something?

  5. You're taking a big risk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Posting AC for obvious reasons, but at least in the UK you're simply taking a big risk by illegally buying drugs online in my experience. The current Conservative government are extremely hostile towards illegal drug buyers. They can and will intercept shipments and send the police to your door. They can and will prosecute. Sadly we really need massive drug law reform and until we get a reasonable government in place we aren't going to get any.

    1. Re:You're taking a big risk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is worse here across the pond. You guys just have one set of LEOs. We have the DEA, FBI, state, county, city, and many other agencies looking for drug users (and sellers) to lock up, because it feeds the private prison system.

      Here in the US, 48 states signed agreements that they will keep their prison/jail beds 90% full or pay fines by the hour. The UK may have a "tough on drugs" coalition, but nobody there is making a living from locking people up and making sure they stay locked up.

    2. Re:You're taking a big risk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not sure how it works in the UK, but in the US, anyone can mail anything to anyone else. When the cops show up with a package addressed to you, and full of drugs, it would be best to disavow any knowledge of the package. Absent any other evidence, your name on the package isn't enough, they have to get you to accept possession of it.

    3. Re:You're taking a big risk by Triklyn · · Score: 1

      YAY for conspiracies, that all made a lot of sense, then i stopped making sense entirely.

      i feel like that was a bait and switch on me.

  6. The flip side by ITRambo · · Score: 1

    It is likely that grey market prescription medication, such as imports from Canada that aren't allowed to be legally resold at a lower cost in the US, are readily available on the dark web. That aspect of the dark web may be illegal in the US, but it certainly isn't immoral. The benefit is that with a ratings system one would have more confidence that they would be purchasing what their doctor prescribes at a price that they can better afford.

  7. Opiates and Meth lead to criminal behavior by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A friend of mine used to use a lot of substances. After a decades or two he realized that he was planning his days around his substance use. One day enough was enough, and he stopped, very rapidly. He described his cocaine days thusly: "Man, I wish I had some cocaine..." It's nice to feel cocaine-good, but you can get by without it.

    Tweakers (meth users) go lurping (steal stuff) to support their habits. A different friend switched from cocaine to meth because it was cheaper. After a while, she realized that she didn't like her personality on Meth, so she stopped. The anxiety started soon thereafter. Her doctor put her on Xanax, then she discovered Vodka. Her third DUI put her in prison for almost 2 years. In many ways, alcohol is worse than meth.

    This woman's son got hooked on opiates while she was anesthetizing herself with alcohol. He started stealing stuff to avoid the withdrawals.

    The primary drugs that lead to stealing to support one's habits are meth amphetamine (not a plant) and the opiates. Society would be much better off if we switched meth users to cocaine, and supplied free opiates to our opiate addicts, so they wouldn't have to steal to support their consumption of artificially-expensive plant products.

  8. Pot? unlikely by TheCarp · · Score: 2

    The issue is, pot is going to be legal soon, and anyone who has been following the issue for very long can see the writing on the wall.

    It may briefly be that the dark web will be a prefered resource for the affluent, may even be now for some, but, after things shake out, that is just not going to last

    --
    "I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
    1. Re:Pot? unlikely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Understand that with the legalization of pot the logical "Step 2" is going to be regulation and taxation, there's already cigarette smuggling happening in places where taxation is high (Canada), I expect it will continue with pot

    2. Re:Pot? unlikely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Again, the cap on regulation is basically, at what point smuggling starts taking over.

      Doesn't matter if it is banning or taxing, at some point the government loses control when it tries to exert too much.

    3. Re:Pot? unlikely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am going to disagree with that. Possession of marijuana is still a Federal crime even though states may have legalized it. This means that if the next President feels like it, he or she can just seize the rolls of customers from the medical dispenseries and transaction logs from the toke joints, round the customers up and throw them all into prison for life.

      Marijuana isn't going to be 50 states legal anytime soon, and it won't be legal in Colorado after 2017 when the new CIC decides to put brakes on the party.

    4. Re:Pot? unlikely by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 2

      I am going to disagree with that. Possession of marijuana is still a Federal crime even though states may have legalized it. This means that if the next President feels like it, he or she can just seize the rolls of customers from the medical dispenseries and transaction logs from the toke joints, round the customers up and throw them all into prison for life.

      Marijuana isn't going to be 50 states legal anytime soon, and it won't be legal in Colorado after 2017 when the new CIC decides to put brakes on the party.

      If the next president does decide to do that, there will be a major amount of rioting in the legal states and senators/congressman governors will get shit canned if they didn't take action on it. What will happen is the DEA will go make arrests/seizures and the governors will then immediately pardon everyone and tell the feds to fuck off, fallowed by the congress/senators raising a shit storm in DC. No president will do that because of the bad plublicity it would generate when the whole left coast is riotings.

      --
      ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
    5. Re:Pot? unlikely by OutOnARock · · Score: 3, Insightful

      no, they can't take the lists and lock everybody up

      best they could do is try and use the list for probably cause to get a search warrant, which would be a stretch

      everyone forgets that Prohibition of Alcohol didn't end because the Feds decided it was a good idea

      Prohibition of Alcohol ended because enough States said "Fuck you, its legal here, if you want to enforce Fed law, do it yourself"

      The Feds don't have the resources to do that, alcohol's status changes at the Fed level.

      That is what will happen with marijuana in the U.S.

    6. Re:Pot? unlikely by mattventura · · Score: 1

      Good luck with that. In Seattle, none of the stores even take credit cards (I'd assume payment processors don't want them), and they don't record your ID when they check it, so all the feds would have to go off of is security camera footage.

  9. Other drugs by sjames · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Personally, I find the trade of prescription drugs on the dark web more interesting. People buying inhalers over the dark web for $30 because they can't afford the $300 demanded at the pharmacy for the same thing.

    1. Re:Other drugs by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      You can actually just buy them from Canada, eh? They still have old-school inhalers with HFCs in them, and you can order them over the web if you just scan and send your prescription.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  10. the end of this by slashmydots · · Score: 1

    If the useless Supreme Court wasn't so busy making up laws and being as political as possible, they'd rule that drug-sniffing dogs were not unreasonable search at USPS hubs and catch every one of these idiots who think it's perfectly safe to send drugs through the US mail.

    1. Re:the end of this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Why can't you just mind your own business?

    2. Re:the end of this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Making a ruling like that WOULD be "being as political as possible".

      At least have the decency to say what you really mean: you want the 4th Amendment repealed.

      The irony here is that you probably claim to be against big government.

  11. Bitcoin is volatile by Danathar · · Score: 1

    Is it? It's been (except for a spike) not so bad over the last 6 months.

  12. lower price means more usage by SethJohnson · · Score: 1

    The whole argument that drug users steal or become violent or act in some other untoward manner simply because they can't obtain or pay for their drug is rendered meaningless because if it weren't for the prohibition laws, these substances would be priced precisely based on supply and demand.

    I think the addictive nature of the drug causes such an obsession that people's ability to be productive to support the addiction will be affected by it's use. It doesn't matter if it costs $15 or $200. The users will consume as much of it as they can and use the bare minimum of their productive resources to purchase that quantity.

    What I'm saying is, if a person is desperate to the point of exchanging oral sex for one dosage of an addictive substance, lowering the price to $15 isn't going to empower the person to spend their time working a productive job and buy a crack rock on the way home from work at the end of the day. The lower price simply means the addict gets to consume more drugs and the person paying for crack to exchange for oral sex just pays a lot less for the crack.

    --
    $5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
    1. Re:lower price means more usage by david_thornley · · Score: 2

      I don't get that.

      I've seen so many drug scandals come out that I find it obvious that people can function just fine on cocaine and other addictive substances. It's probably harming their health, but that's more their problem than mine. It doesn't automatically make them spend everything they've got on drugs, or take as much as they can possibly buy.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    2. Re:lower price means more usage by ztexas · · Score: 1

      Take your argument to its logical conclusion... $200 -> $15 -> 1 cent. How about lowering the price to the cost of an aspirin. Which would likely be the actual per-dose cost of many addictive substances, absent prohibition. Or take alcohol - widespread addiction/abuse, but very few people robbing the Walgreens for a dose of MD 20/20.

  13. What these online dark markets could lead to by Lennie · · Score: 1

    Kristov Atlas: Fear Not the Silk Road (Full speech w/ slides)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    His intro is pretty long, so maybe you want to skip that:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    A big part from what he says is:
    Dark markets can circumvent capital controls:
    - tax avoidance (with the multiple layers of taxes, dark markets are a lot cheaper)
    - trade barriers (trade anything with anyone)

    --
    New things are always on the horizon