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Online Drug Sales Triple After Silk Road Closure, Says Report (nbcnews.com)
The closure of Silk Road -- a marketplace where internet users could purchase drugs and other illegal goods -- in 2013 has had little to no effect on drug sales. According to a new report from RAND, online drug sales have tripled since the site was shut down. NBC News reports: "Since then, an estimated 50 'cryptomarkets and vendor shops where vendors and buyers find each other anonymously to trade illegal drugs, new psychoactive substances, prescription drugs and other goods and services,' have emerged to fill the void, according to the report. The research, which was commissioned by the Netherlands Ministry of Security and Justice, examined data from January and found dealers in the United States had the largest market share with 35.9 percent, followed by the United Kingdom at 16.1 percent and Australia at 10.6 percent. Marijuana was the top seller in January, accounting for 33 percent of illicit drug sales online, followed by prescription medication at 19 percent and stimulants at 18 percent."
Who could have ever imagined that this could happen. Remember when we shut down Pirate Bay and completely stopped all copyright infringement? Oh wait, we just spawned hundreds more torrent sites, and even though kickass torrents was just taken down, pirate bay is actually back up again... What a giant waste of money.
the rich are terribly addicted to power and control of fellow man.
I'd like to see a war on rich sociopaths. humanity would move up several degrees if we redistributed the weath these assholes are hoarding.
the middle and lower classes don't have life as good and so they endulge in things that numb the pain of life.
don't blame them. blame the ones who perpetually insist on having a lower class, and pushing us all down there, more and more over time.
there are many wars in classist societies. the war on 'drugs' is a false one and is a distraction to keep us from thinking of how much the 'haves' have. equalize things and stop insisting that people who like things you don't like should be put in prison.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Wait until the retired start using the dark web to get prescriptions filled from 'virtual Mexico' nationwide.
They already are. Short of doing that, go to Costco and you can get medication at pretty fair prices. Unless you're getting it for free or have a $5 co-pay, Costco is the way to go.
For example, a popular anti-cholesterol drug, Atorvastatin, at Rite-Aid is $255 for 90 pills. The same pills bought through Costco are $16.
If that's not price gouging, I don't know what is. They must be following the Martin Shkreli pricing plan.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
It causes less deaths than tobacco and alcohol and prohibition of it is just another form of social control. The absurdity of the 'house of cards' that prohibits it has more negative effects on society than the plant has ever caused and that's before we start looking at the plethora of medical benefits it has.
Take marijuana off the black market and the funding for many other criminal operations will dry up.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
the people who are "fighting" the "war on drugs" don't actually want to "win"
Think about it
And atorvastatin is a generic, formerly Lipitor. The new monopolist strategy is to game the governmental restrictions on supply to raise the US prices for drugs which are generic worldwide. This was exactly Shkreli's strategy.
What's new is use of the dark web, heretofore the domain of meth dealers and hitman agencies. When the federosaurus fined Google half a billion dollars (yes, billion with a B) for the crime of letting Canadian pharmacies advertise low prices to US customers, they set the stage for this. Now that places like Sun City are filling up with the generation that grew up dealing on black markets for recreational drugs, it won't be long before the bridge club installs a Tor node.
perhaps we could just end prohibition and use the police and our government to pursue more productive endeavours?
So what's your address. I'll anonymously send you a free sample by mail. Boy are you going to have fun when they execute that no knock warrant!
The real problem is that everything that touches money smells like drugs these days. They'll be ripping open birthday cards to grandkids all day long.
The other problem is they would catch far too many of the wrong drug users. Wall Street and Hollywood would be empty wastelands, for example.