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179 Arrested in Global Dark Web Takedown

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200 pointslxm342 comments

What happens when someone creates a decentralized darknet marketplace that transacts using zero knowledge proofs? This is such a waste of resources. Just make all drugs legal and regulate them like anything else. How many times have I bought weed off a dealer in the last two years? The answer is zero, because I purchase my weed legally from a reputable company that follows all applicable regulations.

I've actually run into issues with drug laws from a side I never even thought about: prescription medication. I have asthma, but I don't have health insurance. Asthma inhalers in my country require a prescription.

I know what inhaler I need and I know how to use it, but I cannot legally purchase it. I have to go make a doctor's appointment, pay them a bunch of money so they can write a note that permits me to buy that inhaler. It's a lot of hassle and some cost. The end result is that I just don't have an inhaler. If I get difficulty with breathing I'll just drink coffee and wait until it goes away. Without prescriptions being required for something like this (eg more relaxed drug laws), I wouldn't have this issue.

Here in Australia, melatonin is prescription only. A lot of people in my family buy it over-the-counter when on trips to the US (I often go there for work, plus my brother lives in Oregon). However, this year with COVID nobody has been able to get to/from the US. So I went to the doctor to ask for a prescription. He told me just to order it online instead from a grey-market supplier. Being the intense rule-follower that I am, I was stressed out about doing that, but he reassured me that there was nothing to worry about, the police aren't going to smash down my door over melatonin. Since it is over-the-counter in the US, you can buy so many different brands and formulations, and we've found one we all quite like (cherry-flavoured sublingual tablets), and all you can get on prescription here is expensive slow-release tablets that the kids can't swallow. (Compounding pharmacists also offer immediate release in capsule or liquid form, but sublingual tablets are still easier.)

2-3 years ago, Australia's equivalent to the FDA, the TGA, asked for public submissions on rescheduling melatonin to over-the-counter. The sleep specialists put in an objection, arguing that insomnia is a serious medical condition and requires professional care not over-the-counter treatment, and in response to their objection the TGA kept it prescription-only. The real world reality is that people's insomnia often has complex causes (including psychosocial factors) and a sleep specialist isn't necessarily the answer. Our son's paediatrician told us to give him grey market melatonin, he didn't refer him to a sleep specialist.

EDIT: Actually, I learn today they are going to make it available from pharmacists without prescription, but only for people aged over 55 – not going to help us this decade – https://www.tga.gov.au/book-page/13-melatonin

As someone in the US who has DSPD [0] and uses melatonin daily, I personally wish it was a prescription medication. There are a few reasons for this:

1) The proper dose of melatonin for me is somewhere between 150ug and 400ug, but most melatonin sold comes in 3mg to 10mg pills. That's around 10x too much, taking that dosage of melatonin destroys my sleep schedule. It takes a lot of hunting to find the right dose. I tried once to crush up some melatonin and make my own pills with a precise dosage, but that ended up being a bit of a disaster.

2) Melatonin is regulated as a supplement in the US. Basically that means there is no regulation and even the active ingredient can vary wildly in a pill. When I visited a sleep specialist they mentioned to always buy the same brand, because "Each supplier has a different incorrect dosage, your best bet for dialing in on the correct dosage and timing is hoping that they're at least consistent among themselves".

But I do agree with you, regulating it as a prescription medication would do more harm than good for most people. I wish there were some middle ground that would both solve the above issues but still keep it easily available for people who rely on it.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder

Wow, I never knew that there was a medical diagnosis for being a night owl. Without external forces, my sleep schedule would naturally drift until I am going to bed ~4AM-6AM. Melatonin has been a great help in making sure I get enough sleep so I can work regular hours. Like you, I've found that a small dose is sufficient. I take a quarter of a 3mg pill.

In fact there's evidence of four chronotypes! I, myself, am a napper: :)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01918...

Same here. During lockdown, my sleep schedule actually drifted a full circle around the clock.

If you don't mind, at what time of day do you take it?

Still a bit too much, at 500ug, but I’ve found the Trader Joe’s pills to work well, and are large and chewable, so should be relatively easy to divide.

FYI Nootripicsdepot standardises melatonin at 300ug if ur interested

Liquid melatonin is easier to get a ballpark dose in the 150-400ug range, since you can use single drops from the dropper.

if its water soluble, even better as you can put one drop in a glass of water and drink a quarter of that

I'm strongly anti-prescription and want every medicine to be over-the-counter but it's worth noting there usually are reasons behind the prescription status of a substance you should understand before taking it. Most of the people don't know how to take melatonin the right way. You should[1] take 0.3 mg 7 hours before you go to sleep, NOT 10mg right before that like many people do.

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/E4cKD9iTWHaE7f3AJ/melatonin-...

Also, unless you are really old or travel to different time zones all the time you shouldn't need long-term melatonin supplementation. It's supposed to adjust your inner rhythm so you will naturally fall asleep at the correct time after some days of taking it.

Interesting.... 3 doctors I’ve had and some sleep specialists didn’t know or recommend correct dosage

Not a particularly useful comment, but, wow: melatonin is a prescription in Australia?

I mean, there are potential complications to melatonin…but I think it’s hard to argue that it’s less safe than paracetamol or aspirin.

Paracetamol is a lot more dangerous than melatonin.

Take a big paracetamol overdose, get acute liver failure, significant chance of either death or urgent need for liver transplant–even if you are getting the best possible medical care.

Take a massive melatonin overdose, nothing anywhere near as serious happens. You may become unconscious for 12 hours. There are reports of other negative side effects – tachycardia, hypotension, hypothermia, etc [1][2] – medically risky, but still your odds of survival without serious long-term consequences are pretty high, especially if you get proper medical care. Animal studies have failed to determine an LD50 for melatonin, even giving massive overdoses to animals they survive–it isn't clear if it is even possible for a healthy human to die by massive melatonin overdose, I think if it were to ever happen it would require a complete lack of medical attention combined with a very big dose of bad luck. By contrast, fatal paracetamol overdoses (mostly intentional, sometimes accidental) occur with some regularity.

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/102490790100800...

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31553200/

It's been oft repeated that acetaminophen would not be OTC if it were discovered today. The difference between a therapeutic and a toxic dose are waaaaay too small.

It's setting the bar _really_ low to compare to acetaminophen. There's a good chance if it weren't basically the only safe painkiller for pregnant and breastfeeding women it would simply not exist anymore.

And doctors will tell you to pound paracetamol all day just to stop bothering them with a problem that is ‘just in your head’.

Why would we ever assume that another person, totally unrelated and unconnected, would ever prioritize our needs ahead of their benefit? This is the assumption of so many institutions where authority over ourselves is forcefully delegated to chosen others. This goes predictably wrong just about every time. We shouldn’t even be upset about it.

I think OP made that comparison because in Australia even a kid can get a pack of paracetamol for $1 over the counter at most grocery shops.

I suspect if paracetamol was newly brought to market today it would in fact be prescription.

On the other hand diclofenac is over-the-counter in Australia.

100%. With a drawn-out phase 3 and oodles of black-box warnings to boot.

And why is there so much credulity in this thread? In fact why isn't paracetamol's toxicity more well known? My mom is a nurse and I have an undergrad in chemistry and it wasn't till college senior year in a pharmacochem elective that I learned how narrow the therapeutic range is, and how alcohol shrinks it further to the point where accidentally nerfing your liver with booze and dayquil is plausible.

come on guys, really? You can even overdose with water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

From what I recall it's illegal to buy without a prescription in the UK as well because it's a hormone and all hormones need prescriptions.

But it's not illegal to possess without a prescription, so you can just order it from abroad and essentially nobody cares, the same is true incidentally for steroids in the uk as well.

> and all hormones need prescriptions.

I don't think that's quite right; vitamin D is non-prescription in the UK AFAIK.

I thought I had insomnia but I fixed it by watching math lectures at night. Some people probably still need drugs and it doesn't work when you sleep with someone who doesn't like doing that, but it's one alternative to try.

I do something similar. I always have two audio books to listen to. An interesting book that I listen to recreationally and one that is somewhat boring or relaxing in some way. I use the relaxing material to get to sleep.

You can have it shipped from the US using iherb.com. There is no issue with customs for up to 5mg tablets.

You used to be able to buy melatonin online from the US where I am, but everywhere stopped shipping here, sadly. I guess customs got stricter... I did get a prescription for a month off my doctor recently, but its annoying that I have to pay just for a note to be able to buy it.

Taswegian here, I buy it from iHerb

https://au.iherb.com/pr/natrol-melatonin-3-mg-60-tablets/246...

The comedian Hannibal Buress (who has asthma) has a funny bit about this in his most recent special [1]. He talks about how asthma gets a raw deal compared to other illnesses and isn't taken seriously at all (nerdy stereotypes etc) and how insane it is that you need to keep renewing a prescription for such a necessary and life-saving substance. As if there are people out there getting messed up on albuterol.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVc4-05Agf0&t=18m33s

You know what's bizarre for requiring a prescription? Peridex — chlorhexidine mouthwash.

You can buy chlorhexidine gluconate concentrate (which is still not all that "concentrated" — something like 2% w/v) in the form of a medical or veterinary scrub — or even a floor cleaner — over the counter. But dilute it to 0.15% (at which concentration it would now become not-painful to put it in your mouth; but also would cause it to expire after a couple of days) — and then add the stabilizers and preservatives to it necessary to have it last a few months at STP? Well, now it's a prescription product.

As far as I'm aware, there are no risks from "chronic" use of Peridex as one's every-day mouthwash. Chlorhexidine does the same thing the alcohol in regular mouthwash does — it kills bacteria in your mouth. The only difference is that chlorhexidine sticks around keeping your mucus membranes aseptic for around eight hours (if you don't eat anything), compared to an alcoholic mouthwash's couple-of-minutes. So it actually protects you on a long-enough timescale for your body to get in there and clear out any biofilms causing you gingivitis, canker sores, enamel erosion, etc. — rather than just treading water in the fight against those.

I almost wonder whether the mouthwash companies are in some sort of mutually-assured destruction arrangement, where they all would like chlorhexidine mouthwash to be something they could sell OTC, but they don't want their competitor to be the first to sell it OTC (and win the market by advertising increased effectiveness), and they're willing to lobby to keep it prescription-only so that that doesn't happen.

The only difference is that chlorhexidine sticks around keeping your mucus membranes aseptic for around eight hours (if you don't eat anything), compared to an alcoholic mouthwash's couple-of-minutes. So it actually protects you on a long-enough timescale for your body to get in there and clear out any biofilms causing you gingivitis, canker sores, enamel erosion, etc. — rather than just treading water in the fight against those.

It also kills off the good bacteria in your mouth, and if ingested the bacteria in your digestive system, which is why the formulation designed for ingestion is subject to prescription.

The floor cleaner version is similar to the ingested version but it is not the same thing and the differences matter.

Yes, but... alcoholic mouthwashes also kill the good bacteria in your mouth, and your digestive system if ingested. So does regular drinking alcohol, for that matter. (In fact, both OTC mouthwashes and high-ABV beverages tend to kill good gut and mucosal flora in preference to the bad ones, because the good flora are highly adapted to the ecological niche that only pertains in the "normal" ecological environment of the body.) But neither alcoholic mouthwashes, nor alcoholic beverages, are prescription-only.

> and if ingested ... which is why the formulation designed for ingestion

There are all sorts of things sold OTC for putting in your mouth or other mucus membranes, that would harm you if you swallowed the active dose. Eye drops, for example. Governments generally trust people to just... not do that. They require that the manufacturer put instructions to not ingest the thing on the label, and that's usually the end of it.

Also, there is a reason that mouthwashes have child-proof caps! They are, in fact, dangerous in general if you don't know what you're doing with them!

But chlorhexidine is no more dangerous than your average mouthwash. And far less dangerous than other things you can get ahold of without a prescription.

(And, given the implication of gingivitis gingipains in Alzheimer's, it might turn out to be a lot more dangerous to not sterilize your gums. Especially if you're old, immunoincompetent, and/or have lost many of your teeth, exposing more of the gum surface to regular microabrasion. Enabling OTC access to chlorhexidine mouthwashes could very well be highly-positive in global QALYs.)

> The floor cleaner version is similar to the ingested version but it is not the same thing

Yes, my point wasn't that you should put floor cleaner in your mouth; my point was that someone can buy things that contain a large amount of chlorhexidine gluconate OTC very easily — sometimes even pure! — and anyone who cares could then just distill the active ingredient out to ensure purity. It's not like these are intentionally denatured; none of the other ingredients have the same molecular weight.

How does a prescription keep it from being swallowed? Do the molecules become sentient somehow and take on the will of the prescribing doctor?

Also it's OTC in europe

Interestingly enough, there are downsides to chlorhexidine gluconate.

"It is well known that CHG causes considerable side effects, such as extrinsic staining, an alteration in taste perception, and an increase in calculus formation. The calculus surface itself may not induce inflammation in the adjacent periodontal tissue. However, calculus formation is known to be a factor in plaque retention as well as a reservoir for toxic bacterial products and antigens. In addition, a recent investigation has reported that treatment of Porphyromonas gingivalis biofilms with CHG for 5 min did not degrade their external structure or reduce the volume of protein and carbohydrate constituents. The residual structure following CHG exposure may accelerate calculus formation and may serve as an ideal substrate to promote new microbial adhesion."

https://bmcoralhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12...

No argument about the staining or taste perception. And the calculus formation isn’t too relevant on its own, if you get your teeth cleaned regularly. It chips off.

But re: this part —

> In addition, a recent investigation has reported that treatment of Porphyromonas gingivalis biofilms with CHG for 5 min did not degrade their external structure or reduce the volume of protein and carbohydrate constituents.

IIRC this isn’t a surprising finding; CHG is supposed to do its work in combination with brushing and flossing, not on its own.

Picture a biofilm like a tree. A tree is a lot more brittle when it’s dead and dried out, than when it’s living and actively keeping itself hydrated.

You wouldn’t try to uproot a live tree; that’d be hell, since all the roots would be stretchy. It’d be like trying to snap a live green branch off a tree, times a thousand. Instead, you cut the tree down; let the stump decay and dry; and then pull it out.

Same with biofilms: live colonies are elastic and emit protective mucilage around themselves, rendering them resistant to physical onslaught from brushing. Kill them, though, and they become brittle and able to be abraded away.

But, of course, just as with antibiotics, an intervention that kills 99% of a biofilm colony won’t do much if you just do it once and then immediately stop, because that last 1% can use the dead bacteria and the biofilm itself as a growth medium to come right back. With antibiotics, you need to keep the bacteriostatic effect going for long enough for your immune system to pick off the stragglers. With oral rinses, you need the effect to last long enough for the combination of brushing/flossing, saliva, rubbing from the tongue, and abrasion of fibrous food, to fully clean the biofilm away.

Chlorhexidine mouthwash is sold OTC in the UK (under the brand name Corsodyl), and marketed for daily use.

I was warned by my dentist against using it regularly as, according to her, it has a propensity to stain your teeth.

As a matter of fact, yes, albuterol is used by bodybuilders and "adrenaline junkies" I guess. It's an adrenergic agonist, works somewhat like coffee, but with different/stronger effects.

Oral intake is the best, although inhalation works OK.

Clenbuterol is overall better for that purpose, though.

Still doesn't change the fact that it should be OTC.

People are most definitely getting messed up on albuterol. Pretty much any inhaler, actually. Same with those vapor nose sticks that - folks take the pellet out and get high.

Nyquil and other cough syrups? Yup, folks are getting high off of it. That cold medicine for folks with high blood pressure? Yup. Mucinex? Check. Pretty much anything for asthma? Yup. And slews of other medications. This is why you have pharmacies that keep some medications behind the counter, even though there is a spot on the shelves and they are OTC: These are high theft items.

But then again, I've seen someone get high in the pharmacy from a can of canned air.

(I used to work at a pharmacy in the states).

Can't your doctor just write a long term prescription?

I need an asthma inhaler, which is prescription only. My doc writes out a prescription, which allows me to pick it up at any pharmacy for the duration of a year (can also be a shorter period). After that he writes a new one year prescription.

This is quite common here if you need a regular supply of specific prescription medication.

This is not allowed for controlled substances, which have specific prescriptions (multiple copies), which a doctor must obtain officially and is not allowed to copy. But for any other prescription medication, which is required over a longer period the prescription usually reflects that.

Is that illegal in other countries?

1 year is less long then most people need to breath.

Bonus, in the US you can miss refills due to insurance squabbles leaving you with 0 medication unless you pay huge out of pocket.

I don't know for asthma medication but for insulin it used to be 1 year max and has been unlimited since about 15 years here in the Netherlands as it is chronic. If you change types/dosage (concentration) you need a new prescription.

Oddly in Canada, insulin doesn’t require a prescription. No idea how we decided on that one. Really dangerous to mess up, used in homicides, etc. Life-preserving, but so is pretty much everything else in a pharmacy, mostly over a longer-time period, but not always.

I ran into the same issue. And Dr.s offices have pretty much become churn factories for insurance billing, so I hate the fact that I have to go through them. To get around them, I found that Mexican and Indian pharmacies would send me inhalers. The only issue is that it took so long to get to the US, but it seemed to be as good as the US stuff.

I have the exact same problem and the exact same condition. The justification is kids “might use them to get high” but as far as I’m concerned it’s a handout to Doctors. An inhaler is only $25 without insurance.

Recently I have been able to setup a video call with an urgent care clinic to just write me the damn prescription and add about a year’s worth of refills, $50 for the call, but it’s still stupid I can’t just walk in and buy an inhaler off the shelf.

You didn’t specify a country, but if you can setup a call with a doctor, I would encourage you to go that route. It’s still more money than you should have to pay, but it’s better than going in person and in my experience, a lot cheaper.

> The justification is kids “might use them to get high” but as far as I’m concerned it’s a handout to Doctors.

That's also such a weird concept in 2020. Kids can just buy literally any drug they want on the dark net and have it shipped to their homes, they don't need to drink a gallon of cough syrup or use inhalers to get high.

It's interesting that you can get refills on a single prescription. I'm in Germany, and all doctors I've ever been to go the Let's Encrypt route, aka you'll get a prescription for 1-3 months worth (whatever the size sold at the pharmacy is), but you need to call them up and get a new prescription afterwards.

They’re $4 or so.

I order mine 2 dozen at a time from https://www.alldaychemist.com/. Ships to the US, no prescription needed. Takes a month or two to arrive.

$600 Advair is like $60 on there, too.

Good to know. Thank you!

And since asthma is not curable, you should get a lifetime pass to buy inhalers, but instead you have to keep paying a doctor more money to renew your prescription.

Same for insulin for type 1 diabetes. Drives me crazy that there is no long-term prescription (US). I once dropped my 2nd last vial of insulin while waiting for supplies to be delivered. There was a delay due to weather or wild fires or something and I had to call so that my insurance company would allow a one time emergency supply to be sent. It was a scary experience.

> I've actually run into issues with drug laws from a side I never even thought about: prescription medication. I have asthma, but I don't have health insurance. Asthma inhalers in my country require a prescription.

I'm afraid this is one of the many pitfalls that occur to the most vulnerable in Society, one that is largely ignored or dismissed entirely by regulators with good intentions that ultimately keeps the status quo in place. Last year the poorly kept secret of DNMs [0] less known usecase(s) came to the light to the masses in MN regarding insulin due to shortages and rising costs--it got so bad/lucrative that they were using clearnet marketplaces.

People need to realize that DNMs are more than just access to illicit drugs, they often serve as lifelines for people to get access to generic drugs or access to less expensive alternatives (drugs/devices) to people with limited means and no access to medical insurance and the Rx to otherwise insipid things as mentioned below (Melatonin).

This is why, if nothing else, people should not be lauding these closures, which are done with tax money, and done under the guise of 'helping people' when in reality all they are doing is reducing the competition for large pharma and to an extent the drug trades of certain intelligence agencies.

I see this becoming a bigger concern as so many in the US are losing their insurance tied to their FT jobs no longer existing or being reduced to PT status due to COVID. This news is just showing how inhospitable Nation-States are and to what length they are going to impair creating alternatives and maintain their perverse model(s).

Having spent time in the Pharma-controlled Industry of Diagnostics (post Obama-care), I have come to worry more about what a Stanforite CEO like Joe Jimenez can wrought on the World more than a Pablo Escobar or El Chapo.

[0]: https://www.govtech.com/health/Frustrated-Diabetics-Use-Inte...

Reading Don Quixote I was amazed to find people 400 years ago complaining about needing a prescription from a guild barber for a potion from a guild apothecary.

I don't know what country you are, but in both the countries I lived in, pharmacies are more reasonable, especially for adult buyers. They would usually ask if you have an old prescription (maybe dating back a year or two), or perhaps your old inhaler, and would generally agree to give you a new one.

Of course you'll pay the full price, no insurance, unless you have a valid prescription (generally a year old at most), but otherwise, the price isn't too steep (about 6€).

I take Escitalopram (Lexapro) for anxiety. At home you can get 6 months of repeats, and it's all pretty simple, however I am now an expat in Europe which makes it that much more painful to get Lexapro.

It's available here, but I hate having to find a doctor to get a prescription. The doctors consultation usually costs about 70-80€ (and they will usually only give you a prescription for 2 months worth).

I have found that it's available from a variety of sources without prescription. Thailand has many pharmacies that will sell you whatever you want, and when I stop there, I always stock up (Pre COVID-19).

Spain as well, the pharmacies are incredibly lax on prescriptions for certain things (they won't sell you anything addictive, but other things are easy). I haven't been back to Spain recently either for COVID-19 reasons.

There are also definitely grey market websites that one can use, much like there are for things like Modafinil, though it's less in demand.

All this for something that I need to keep taking (it's quite dangerous to stop).

My experience with Escitalopram in the UK:

After the (free) doctor prescribed it to me, they put it on the system as a "repeat prescription". This means the online pharmacy app would automatically order more to be delivered well in advance of running out, 3 months worth of pills at a time (9 GBP each). Once a year, the doctor would send me an appointment for a medication review. Aside from that the only time I saw a doctor was when I wanted to adjust the dosage.

yea I know thats the case in the USA. I was without health insurance for a bit while fun-employeed and didn't want to pay for the $500/month plan.

After an unfortunate running with a friend's pet rabbit, I was left unable to do anything strenuous due to acute bronchial inflammation. After suffering for a few days, I was willing to pay anything to be able to breathe properly again

I ended up paying a doctor out of pocket $200 for a consultation. I literally told her what I had and that I needed albuterol. she agreed and wrote me the damn prescription so I could pay $75 for the inhaler.

All in all, 4 days of sufferring + $270 in expenses

LONG STORY SHORT,

I ran into a similar situation in Thailand. I walked the pharmacy within an hour of having the reaction, bought the inhaler for $3 and was fine within minutes.

again: $3 vs $270

The whole system is a racket and a big part of why I prefer to not live in the united states anymore.

A person I know gets infections every couple/few years and has done so for many years. Instead of paying for a doctor script they go to a pet store and buy fish biotics. It's literally amoxicillin and works.

This is very risky. Some people are allergic and can become allergic to penicillin-based drugs. Also...how do you get the dosing right? How do you know when to quit taking it in order to be responsible not adding to the creation of antibiotic-resistant "super-bugs"?

I'm asking these rhetorically. Of course the answer is make the regulation more accessible. But in the meantime, this solution should not be taken lightly.

I believe there is listing of the dosage in mg of the active ingredient on the bottle, and so they just matched up the dosage with what they had been previously prescribed.

They're aware of the 'super-bug' problem, but when you're the one in pain you're a lot more willing to undertake some risky behavior to make it stop. They only take a single dose, I believe.

With you on the regulation.

I'll advise them of developing allergy, I'm not sure if they're aware, and I was not. Thank you.

This is interesting, particularly in light of skissane comments about melatonin being prescription only.

Here in Australia, you can buy Asthma Inhalers "over the counter" (no prespcription) from pharmacies (Salbutamol). They sometimes do ask if you're seeing a doctor for your asthma, but that's about it. (I take a regular treatment for it)

Have you tried nebulized albuterol? It's dirt cheap, even off-insurance, you can get the steroid solution, also cheaper than Pulmacort, to boot and get long-acting protection.

The nebulizer pumps and the inhaler cups can be found used or online with some searching.

I use rescue inhalers ($30/ea after good insurance) but also keep nebs around for attacks.

Coming to the US, I was surprised I need a prescription from a US doctor ($100+ shakedown) to get glasses or contact lenses. This is what happens when you let special interest groups write the law.

Why do you need to see a doctor for a repeat prescription is the question here, why cannot you logon to the doctors website and just request a repeat.

In the UK you can do just that: https://www.nhs.uk/using-the-nhs/nhs-services/pharmacies/how... - so there is no fundamental reason why not.

I live in a third world European country and I just did that for the first time a couple of months ago. Couldn't get them on the phone to request an appointment (that would have been free anyways), so I just filled out a form and got an email a day later. What a time to be alive!

Buy many inhalers on one prescription. It's like contacts. They give you a prescription for a year. Then you buy a few years worth

Can a physician not just call it in?

That still implies you can afford to see a doctor long term. I assume if someone isn't seeing you regularly they might have issues with calling in a prescription and require a visit. Not saying all do...but without insurance and/or research it may be hard to find one which you know the answer for sure.

I personally have never had a major issue getting referrals and at times call in medication for known long term illnesses but in those cases they were medical professionals who I had been using for long periods of time before having a lapse in regular visits.

a buddy of mine got asthma when the smoke was bad a few years in the bay area. The doctor requires a chest xray every year to renew the subscription.

This is quite insane because there is a cumulative risk of cancer from successful xrays. Not huge but non zero.

"The American College of Radiology recommends limiting lifetime diagnostic radiation exposure to 100 mSv. That is equal to 10,000 chest x-rays or up to 25 chest CTs."

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/should-i-worr...

ya, its almost like the doctor doesn't have his patients best interest in mind.

Mine just wants me to breathe into this tube so he can measure my lung capacity. Do it every now and then to make sure dosage is ok.

Regular xrays... does he own stock in the xray business?

Some doctors have an xray on site in their clinic. He is presumably billing an extra 250-500 every time he takes a picture. Doctors that have diagnostic equipment and thus benefit from usage are much more likely to order an xray than doctors who wouldn't profit from it.

>I know what inhaler I need and I know how to use it, but I cannot legally purchase it.

What about the thousands of idiots who would mis-use it and die, or self-prescribe whatever BS and have harmful effects?

Even if you're some hardened Ayn-Rand style "each to themselves" person, their bad decisions would then also negatively impact others who had nothing to do with their decision, not to mention wasting societal resources.

What about the millions of idiots and non idiots who die due to lack of medication?

Give counseling at the pharmacy counter, limit to reasonable doses, check ID.

>What about the millions of idiots and non idiots who die due to lack of medication?

Is that because of lack of money (to see doctor, get prescription, buy drugs) or because of mandatory prescription alone?

Because in civilized countries nobody dies "due to lack of medication" just because a prescription is required.

Except if you mean people can't self-expirement with their own arbitrary self-prescriptions, and die from that because their doctors wouldn't prescribe them the same stuff.

Which is an argument I don't really understand -- is the premise that people informed by the self-study/internet/drug ads/friends/fake news/whatever, know better than a qualified doctor what to prescribe themselves? And that these competent self-prescribers abound so much, that are more in number than the people who would just fuck themselves with BS self-prescriptions?

Guess he should die because there might be some idiots out there inhaling Salbutamol?

Or, you know, he should just get a prescription?

Again, the problem is that there are reasons they can't. Doctors and harmacists should not be playing gateway keepers. Just imo.

I've had it with terrible doctors, long waiting times and needing to get a prescription every damn month or so.

And God forbid you move countries, that's months of going through the whole process again. All for some non addictive medication.

Some countries have them OTC and it works fine. It just doesn't put money into the system's budget and the doctors' pockets.

These reasons are why these busts have to get more elaborate and have to be a precision strike all at once, because the governments know that they get one chance before the industry hardens itself in reaction.

The best practices are completely known, people just have no pressure to implement them until external pressure reveals itself.

Right now the user experiences suck for more secure things. Monero multisignature is hardly refined, so it cannot replace centralized escrow just yet, but now people might prioritize developing it. For example. This is antifragility in play, and a war of attrition for the state: the costs to make the busts get higher and the take gets smaller.

I think decriminalization and treatment programs are the answer. I don't think allowing direct sales of things like fentanyl, meth, and coke are the answer though. Perhaps treatment programs can provide safe product to addicts, but picking it up causally at a local dispensary seems a bit much. They're just not on the same level as weed.

Indeed, Portugal did this and it's working [1], it's time to face the fact that the War On Drugs is a waste of time and money.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radic...

People often cite Portugal in these discussions, but isn't that citing one example out of, what, hundreds(?) of societies around the world that all have different values, contexts, social structures and constructs, etc...

Don't get me wrong, I also believe the war on drugs is probably doing more harm than good overall, but I also don't think that we can naively assume that "let's do what Portugal did" will just work for everyone.

Portugal AFAIK ain't legalizing a thing, just making possession a non-crime. And obviously very limited possession. Which is a progress compared to US' creation of whole jail-for-money industry in the past where few joints could easily ruin rest of your life, but far cry from what consumers really want - just go to shop and buy the god damn thing, legally, with safety and purity guarantees, and all constraints applied (ie age).

Ie if you want to smoke a joint, you still have to go to same illegal drug dealers as everywhere else. Just police won't bother you if they find you with that joint, they will just take it from you (some places like Switzerland can put a fine on top of that, decriminalization has many flavors around the world).

"Work" is a weasel word here. The only relevant question is whether it would be less harmful than the current arrangement. Since the current arrangement involves imprisoning people on a massive scale, and experience shows that deterrence is minimal anyway, the drug would have to be very destructive to match the harm caused by enforcement.

But if you want another example, how about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Hemp_Drugs_Commission? Not only it's a very different society than Portugal, but it's also more than a century apart. And yet:

"In regard to the physical effects, the Commission have come to the conclusion that the moderate use of hemp drugs is practically attended by no evil results at all."

"In respect to the alleged mental effects of the drugs, the Commission have come to the conclusion that the moderate use of hemp drugs produces no injurious effects on the mind."

"In regard to the moral effects of the drugs, the Commission are of opinion that their moderate use produces no moral injury whatever."

"Viewing the subject generally, it may be added that the moderate use of these drugs is the rule, and that the excessive use is comparatively exceptional. The moderate use practically produces no ill effects. In all but the most exceptional cases, the injury from habitual moderate use is not appreciable. The excessive use may certainly be accepted as very injurious, though it must be admitted that in many excessive consumers the injury is not clearly marked. The injury done by the excessive use is, however, confined almost exclusively to the consumer himself; the effect on society is rarely appreciable. It has been the most striking feature in this inquiry to find how little the effects of hemp drugs have obtruded themselves on observation. The large number of witnesses of all classes who professed never to have seen these effects, the vague statements made by many who professed to have observed them, the very few witnesses who could so recall a case as to give any definite account of it, and the manner in which a large proportion of these cases broke down on the first attempt to examine them, are facts which combine to show most clearly how little injury society has hitherto sustained from hemp drugs."

It's extremely unsettling that my tax dollars go to waste like this to essentially ruin someone's life. The people now have records and all the unnecessary paperwork to go along with it.

The furthest I would be willing to compromise with this regime (won't call them a proper government) is to allow them to tax our substances. It's better than what they are getting as it is, because all they are doing right now is locking poor, innocent people up.

Prohibition and criminalization of mere substances never has, and will never work for us. Everyone I know who wishes to take drugs does so without as much as a single thought to the law.

But this feeds to prison industrial complex and having private prisons in your district is a good way to raise campaign funds from those lobbies. It's in the (certain) lawmakers interests to keep the war on drugs going so they don't lose their own dealer.

> But this feeds to prison industrial complex

i wish people would stop saying this. it draws attention to wealth and corporatism, which is not in any way the problem.

for-profit prisons are a solution to an _already existing_ problem, which is the government and it's legal system generating record numbers of prisoners.

the war on drugs has caused more harm and destruction in america, mexico, and south american drug countries than everything short of the bloodiest wars in history. the scope is staggering. TWOD has racist roots, it widened the schism between police and policed, it entrenched generational poverty in poor neighborhoods by destroying families for non-violent crimes, exploded the prison population, set back the medicinal research of THC and psychedelics, aided and abetted the homelessness problem, and surely more.

the elevator pitch to fixing BLM issues is ending the war on drugs.

EDIT: oh lets not forget no-knock warrants or civil asset forfeiture.

Re civil forfeiture, I dunno if you saw this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbs_v._Indiana

oh i hadnt seen this, thanks.

what a prime example of how totally fucked the war on drugs is. $225 in drugs, permanently seized his brand new $40k vehicle. has trouble getting a job due to his record, has to borrow a neighbors car once he does.

thank fucking god we can at least put a ceiling on what cops can take from you. this decision is great, but im not sure it makes sense for cops to have to have a means to fine people via asset seizure.

i have a suspicion that at some point in the future, all extra-judicial and extra-legislative asset seizures will be determined excessive.

Calling civil asset forfeiture "extra-judicial" seems inaccurate - there is still a court involved, right? It's just civil rather than criminal, so there's a weaker standard of proof (preponderance of evidence, instead of beyond reasonable doubt).

This comment shouldn't be construed as support for civil asset forfeiture, I'm just trying to clarify terminology.

In my state, weed dealers can offer a better experience than a retail shop because of too much regulation. The black market still thrives and quality/trust is not an issue. There is a balance somewhere, legalization with over regulation isn't quite the right answer.

Weed is kind of a special case because you pretty much know what you are getting just by looking at it. This is not the case for most other drugs.

Not quite. A lot of weed commercial weed is sprayed to smitherins with chemicals and actually just tastes and smokes really poorly. You cant tell that just by looking at it. Here in Canada, every single order I've gotten from government and private licensed shops has been average quality at best. Dealers have at least as good quality.

This is such a waste of resources.

It's a very profitable waste of resources.

It's really not

DEA budget 2B in 2018

Cash + property that can be liquidated: 340M in 2018

The implication is that it's profitable for the contractors, not for the public.

It's profitable for the footsoldiers, just not the taxpayer. Pro cops get paid bank.

It means the public lost 2.34B and DEA gained 2.34B

There are a lot of people on HN that would take serious issue with any implication that any given tax dollar has anything less than a net-neutral effect for the taxpayers as a whole.

Oddly they seem to keep really quite when the topic of the war on drugs comes up.

To be fair saying something is not profitable doesn't mean that it isn't a net-benefit for the country.

I personally don't think that our current approach to drugs produces a net-benefit, but figuring out the true effects of alternatives is really not simple at all.

It's a zero sum game, though. One profit is another's loss.

Not in terms of lives lost. The war on drugs is a waste of money, time, and lives.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radic...

I completely agree. I was responding to this:

> It's a very profitable waste of resources.

Which implied that someone was profiting from the war on drugs, and my point was that many people lose in the war on drugs.

> This is such a waste of resources. Just make all drugs legal and regulate them...

Everybody knows that, what you don't realize is that drugs are the perfect excuse for many things.

> What happens when someone creates a decentralized darknet marketplace that transacts using zero knowledge proofs?

You still need a market for reputation; how do you trust a vendor? How do you know decentralized reviews are not fake?

You can't. But you can trust that negative reviews are not fake.

No one would give themselves a negative review on purpose. And this is key.

I worked out these problems a few years ago, but never followed up. Both due to lack of ability and due to, y'know, enjoying being able to sleep at night without wondering whether it's my last day on this pillow.

Competitors will give someone a fake negative review... it happens all the time on Amazon

In this world the customer base is a lot smaller. If there is a question about that reviewer being unauthentic, a request to see a label, or tx block is straightforward way to weed out bad actors.

It's a lot harder to get away with fraud in a smaller customer base operation and the people who run the marketplaces are not interested in allowing fraud to persist, they also have an incentive to squash that, unlike amazon.

You’d have to choose to do business with a competitor. And that won’t happen more than once.

Or do business with any newbie on the network, who might be a competitor. Or do business with any customer who gets their account hacked.

That doesn't help much even if true. A vendor could create an account with lots of good fake reviews and a few real reviews, good or bad. They'll look the same as an established vendor with lots of good real reviews.

The other half of the equation was to make it costly to create vendor accounts. A vendor is required to send crypto to a nonexistent address (proof of burn).

That makes newcomers a juicy target for competitors to leave fake negative reviews. If you need to pony up $10000 to start a vendor account, a competitor can spend $1000 to leave 40 bad reviews, assuming $50 each and reselling at a 50% loss.

If you need a 90% positive rating to be trusted, you'll need 400 good reviews, about $20000 in turnover.

It's too cheap to ruin a vendor and too expensive to maintain one.

Its unclear from the article, but it sounds like what happened is they seized some servers that had address info of some drug dealers.

Zero knowledge proofs aren't really relavent. If the market works in such a way it needs the address, zkp's wont change that. If its just a middle man, then old fashioned public key crypto would have been sufficient. (If the site was taken over for an active attack, then MITM is a possibility, but there are things you can do to make that detectable if you have out of band communications)

There are still physical goods being exchanged. Someone is selling the product and someone is receiving it. They can still track people via that.

Easier said than done.

The goods are usually exchanged via post and cryptocurrency. The seller generally drops off the goods in random post boxes using prepaid [express] envelopes and usually disguising the packages in some form such as by masquerading as an ebay seller or with a real/fake company as the source address. This is very difficult to track, especially if the seller does a good job distributing the drop offs over a wide area and by using a large set of random source addresses.

Of course, if the packages are detected in the postal system the recipient can be unmasked, but small time buyers are of little interest to authorities. There's nothing that the authorities can do to unmask the sellers even with all the information a buyer is able to provide them.

This is a decentralized market? Drug markets have a lot of links. The feds likely found a way to uncover one node and followed that thread.

I wouldn't assume that the "darknet" itself was compromised. There are still lots of bad targets out there which have long been in operation. The cops found another way to get inside the network.

>all drugs

Maybe not all drugs. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater here. There are very dangerous drugs that can cause addiction such that people will kill for more (and can never get enough).

That said, wiping away weed, peyote, and LSD from the list of criminal substances should make the DEA’s job much more realistic.

Criminalization helps nothing, achieves no positive goals. Quite the opposite. We've been trying this for about a century, we've seen the results. At some point you have to act on the evidence.

We're talking about maybe a slight increase in health issues (legalization does not imply a significant increase in use, eg cannabis usage in the Netherlands is pretty average for Europe), as opposed to the entire monstrosity of the War on Drugs, including the empowerment of violent criminals ranging from local gangs to international cartels.

Ever ask China how that whole opium thing worked out for them?

Wiki says it increased usage for 2 centuries after it became prohibited.

"Opium prohibition in China began in 1729, yet was followed by nearly two centuries of increasing opium use."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium

Don't know if we can trust numbers from that time though, you probably want to look at production.

And population growth...

Heroin is still very illegal in the Netherlands, with 12 to 16 years in jail for trading it. Heroin usage is also illegal.

This language is too loose. "(de)Criminialization" usually refers to demand side, not supply side.

The really addictive and dangerous drugs are the ones that society would most benefit from decriminalization. Sure, it's not great when college kids get a criminal record from smoking reefer, but that's the least of our drug problems in the US. It's the dangerous drugs that are killing people and orphaning children, and those are the people who have the most trouble getting effective help due to the criminal nature of their addiction.

Portugal had a bad heroin problem in the 90s. How did they fix it? They decriminalized possession of every drug, including heroin. Instead of sending users to jail, they now send them to treatment. It was an overwhelming success.

Some drugs are dangerous because of the drug war. Crack cocaine for example has little reason to exist except that it is easier to smuggle than powder cocaine. It's also harder to hold dealers to account for poor quality control when they are unable to be regulated or monitored.

Sorry, but you don't seem to understand why crack was made.

It's not because it's easier to ship, it's because you can double or triple your money...

Example... 1 kilo raw coke...40k [US price] cook that same 1 kilo into crack and now you have 3 kilos of crack that you can easily make 100k or more off in the street

The drug it's self, in crack form, is 10x more addictive then powdered cocaine. The user experience of a "high" only last for a few minutes, side effect being users use the product faster. This is why it's a lucrative market for gangs and street dealers. If you hold territory to distribute your product, you increase your revenue. Cash is what every dealer wants, product is what ever user wants. Supply and demand effects.

Don't know why some may believe people make crack because "it's easier to transport"... no, no its not, especially when you consider liquid cocaine. Yes cartels smuggle liquid cocaine![1]

It's about money.

Cartels have billions & billions of US dollars to spend, they spend big money on R & D too.[2][3]

[1]https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2019/11/15/housto...

[2]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40480405

[3]https://www.nytimes.com./2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-d...

1kg of coke becomes 3kg of crack ... I seriously doubt that. When you cook crack you wash any impurities out of the coke (and convert the salt to base). If anything it should weigh less (I think?).

Even for most of the really dangerous drugs, both society overall and the addicts suffer more harm due to the war on drugs than they would have with a pure, cheap supply.

Experiments with e.g handing out heroin to addicts pretty consistently reduces both direct harm from overdoses and secondary effects such as crime. The latter in large part because the less harmful, because it is pure and consistent, medical grade heroin is cheap.

There are some drugs that serve no purpose if most drugs are legalised, because safer options with the same effects exists. E.g many opiates are pretty interchangeable for addicts - the reason why oxycodone has been a recruitment avenue to heroin abuse for example, and a reason for the use of fentanyl - and so some of the most dangerous analogues could remain restricted without retaining a black market demand.

But overall the war on drugs is immoral and unethical, and politicians maintaining it have blood on their hands.

Let's be clear. Safely administered heroin is much better than street heroin. It's far far worse than not taking heroin.

Letting all the children in the country hooked on safe heroin is not a solution.

The notion that legalising it would get "all the children in the country" hooked on heroin is ludicrous scare-mongering.

Doctors can already prescribe dangerous and addictive drugs. I don't see why we can't let them also prescribe other dangerous and addictive drugs.

Who's gonna offer those doctors kickbacks to sell heroin baggies?

Ohh right probably pharma companies [1] [2] [3]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622774/

[2] https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m409

[3] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/opioids-d...

If you take a snapshot of the state of things at the height of opioid prescriptions and a snapshot now it's hard to say that it wasn't a hell of a lot better.

People weren't ODing or engaging in petty crime with anywhere near the same frequency when they could get their fix from their doctor. The feds cracked down and people turned to the black market and that gets us to where we are today.

Obviously manufacturers giving doctors kickbacks for getting people onto addictive substances is far from ideal but the enemy of my enemy is my ally and all that.

Yes all drugs: consider reading "Legalize This" a super-short and superbly written book by a philosopher and legal scholar who has been thinking about this issue for decades.

https://www.amazon.com/Legalize-This-Decriminalizing-Practic...

TL;DR version: anyone being put in jail deserves an explanation. None can be given when they are a non-violent drug user.

I got a simple explanation, so feel free to quote the book if it has an argument to counter it.

Drug addicts are a high risk group for triggering cost in social safety nets. The risk of driving under the influence of drugs are higher for drug addicts, there is a higher risk that parents fail their responsibility while under drugs, and as with other addictions there is an increase in risk for failing to pay rent and having enough money to pay for food. Drug addicts are also more likely to get sick and needing health care (relevant for countries where the government guaranties health care).

Since the government is expected to step in and pay for the social safety net, it then make sense that they implement laws to manage the risk and reduce costs. One way to do so is to make drugs illegal, especially those direct associated with risks that increase government costs.

If the government did not have any responsibility to supply a social safety net then there would be no need to have those laws.

This argument does not address the concern.

If I just stabbed someone, there is a clear explanation for why I am being put in jail. If I am possessing a drug, why a I being put in jail? Because of some hypothetical possibility? Because I belong to a group of people that have a higher chance of doing something that might end up in something bad happening?

Justice needs to answer an individual why they are about to be deprived of most of their liberties. Putting someone in jail is the worst thing the government does to individuals; such a severe action requires a personal explanation.

Sometimes the law is designed to target something that might happen rather than a personal action that caused something to happen.

One such law that exist in most countries triggers if you drive while under the influence just by yourself on a lone road. You can still end up in jail. In the eye of the legal system it is bad enough that an accident might happen. Same for driving a car deemed unsafe. There is similar laws around the world against guns and explosives, where simply possession is enough to run fault of the law.

As with most laws, first time offenders generally should not end up in jail (US can be a bit strange and unfair on that point). However a lot of laws all over the world are simply about what might end up happening given a risk factor.

I think that argument falls apart as soon as you consider alcohol. Alcohol certainly qualifies as a hard drug, based on its impact for both users and bystanders (especially in your example with driving). We tried to ban it and that made things worse.

Also, isn't imprisoning people a huge cost itself?

Governments did indeed try that and would likely still want to do it, but there were way too much cultural values embedded in alcohol and production is also too easy that controlling it is not possible.

Alcohol is however generally not defined as a hard drug. Soft drugs would be alcohol, marijuana, sleeping pills and sedatives, while hard drugs includes heroin and cocaine. Netherlands has a very strict line between the two in both enforcement and punishment. Netherlands has a war on hard drugs, but is celebrated for not having one for soft drugs.

When it comes to alcohol and driving, Sweden for example uses a system that directly punish that circumstance. Driving licenses are very expensive to get and take a lot of time. Getting hit by a DUI not only mean you have to retake the tests and pay for a new license, but you are also likely to get a ban for up to 3 years. For many that is a very harsh punishment and one enough to discourage drunk driving. For sever DUI with blood values over 1.0 you also risk jail sentences up to 2 years. Any DUI involving other drugs than alcohol is regulated under the harsher rules. You do not need to trigger an accident for this to happen.

Drug laws does not need to be all or nothing. Scientists could/do define the risk profiles for different drugs in different circumstances and law makers can make more lenient or strict laws depending on those risk profiles. Sadly culture do play a role in permitting some high risk over other, but that doesn't mean risk management is bad explanation for why laws exist that punish non-violent drug user. It only make them inconsistent.

Punish Abuse not use.

While yes there are very dangerous drugs that can cause addiction there is ZERO evidence that large scale criminal prohibition reduces the number of people addicted to those drugs, assists anyone to become clean or does anything at all to resolve the issue of addiction

In contrast there is A LOT of indications that even for very dangerous drugs that can cause addiction criminal drug prohibition makes the problem WORSE, creates worse outcomes for the general public, erodes basic human rights, and wastes resources that should be put into treatment instead of criminalization

Punish Abuse not use.

I would say punishment of abuse doesn't get us very far. What do we do with alcoholics? Sure, we punish them if they drive while intoxicated, but other than that, they are offered treatment and if they refuse it, they just suffer the consequences of their addiction until they decide treatment is a better option.

Seems like that could work for drugs as well.

>they just suffer the consequences of their addiction

No, their family and society as a whole suffer as well. I'd even go on to say that drug addiction is usually more destructive towards others than towards the addicted individuals themselves.

I'm not advocating for keeping the so called "war on drugs" up, but let's be real here, people.

> I'm not advocating for keeping the so called "war on drugs" up, but let's be real here, people.

So what would you have us do? Throw them in jail and pay for that?

I think there are a lot of options between "let everyone do whatever drugs they want as much as they want" and "throw them all in jail"

That’s certainly true, but we’re looking at minimizing harm. The question is, is there a better alternative?

Emotional Harm should not be the basis of Public Policy, and that is what people generally talk about with "hurts their family" it is emotional harm of their loved one physically harming themselves.

That is a very dangerous path to start making public policy because of emotional harm.

One should only punish physical harm to person (i.e battery) or property (i.e theft)

No addict is going to volunteer to go to treatment until they hit rock bottom. Forced treatment never (rarely?) works because it wasn't the addicts decision to do it. There are a lot of functioning addicts that are sustaining, but do not see the havoc that they are causing for those caught in their circles.

I guess that would have to define "abuse", which to me and my statement means you are abusing others to feed your addiction, i.e your are stealing, assaulting, or commiting other crimes against other persons.

Use would not involve that, as if you maintain your use with out abusing others than i would not classify that as abuse.

Of course to some people any Use is abuse but then why have 2 terms

The regulations on anything that’s so addictive it’s debilitating would probably be to make it illegal. I realize it’s not the case for all drugs, but a lot of them fall under that umbrella.

So liquor and oxycontin?

> Just make all drugs legal and regulate them like anything else.

When those regulations are broken, should we just decriminalize that? I bring this up because "enforcement is a waste of resources," consistently applied, quickly approaches anarchy. We need other reasons for deciding whether a behavior should be criminal.

Yes, we should.

Marijuana went criminal > faux "medical" > decriminalized > legal.

Now, all tryptamine and phenylamine plants and fungi are well along in the same process; with Ketamine, LSD, and MDMA following close behind.

Anarchy isn't problematic. What is problematic is sudden anarchy where complex systems used to exist. The way to avoid that is to loosen restrictions iteratively.

Can you find a victim without doing tons of mental gymnastics?

If not then it's not worth the tax dollars to send the cops after it.

And FWIW anarchy is a lot like children and terrorists. It makes a good heuristic for detecting unsound arguments.

Yes. I have family members whose brains were damaged from methamphetamine abuse. I had another family member who died from opioid addiction.

Not all drugs are equal.

I have a friend whos a raging alcoholic who's almost died from alcohol intoxication, and I have a cousin who has overdosed on prescription pain killers. I also know a few acquaintances who have died from prescription fentanyl.

The answer here isn't to make alcohol illegal, or to ban prescription pain killers, because that would surely exacerbate the problem.

I don't know why Americans seem to think that banning substances and jailing people who use them is the answer to this problem.

It's not an American thing. It's an authoritarian thing. Authoritarians the world over love criminalizing people. It just so happens that drugs are a great way to go about it because so much of the population does this or that drug and so few people are gonna step up and defend the addicts.

Making harmful drug dealing illegal while providing support to those addicted would be a good way to handle it IMO. I DO NOT want opioids or meth legalized, they are entirely too harmful to the user and those around them.

I'm very anti-prohibition and I also agree. I've tried very hard to come up with a justification to allow unbounded access to the "nasty ones": meth, fent, heroin, and possibly coke/crack and xanax. What sets these apart? Their rapid delivery and extreme affinity for hitting reward pathways makes them chemically addicting almost by their nature. Further, they have narrow pharmacological windows, making overdose common. Ironically, if you look at the data blinded, without knowing the drug associated with the data point, alcohol _squarely_ belongs in this group.

However there are plenty of entries safer than these drugs, that are far easier targets for legalization first.

And all this happened while those substances were highly illegal, and any possession/manufacture was relatively severely punishable. Yet they got so much of it for such a long time that they damaged their health.

Drugs are like prostitution - they will exist and people will want them no matter what. The idea that you can ban it from existence is laughable and sad at the same time, something about unability to grasp reality of who we humans are.

There are no easy solutions to complex problems like that. What might work better is give addicts controlled safe environment, and a lot of counseling help with getting back on their feet. Not everybody will make it, that part is hard to accept but that's how life is.

Meth and opioid abuse causes permanent brain changes that affect their capacity to feel pleasure. Teenagers are stupid and their brains primed for novelty seeking. Because of this, legalization would drastically increase the volume of drugs available, and thus would most likely increase the number of young people exposed to these drugs, affecting them for life.

I really don't understand the recent push for legalization of all drugs. Meth is not like marijuana and absolutely should not be legalized.

darkweb <> weed darkweb = everything illegal in todays society

The money they claim 6M for 200 arrests is a pretty darn low dollar per person claim - this is a really weak bust in my opinion, and I assume a lot of those arrests are really unlucky people who happened to slip into this net, but not cybercriminal masterminds, or drug lords.

Let's celebrate when we catch the people who produce the shit, or even better, legalize as much of it as we can and establish social programs to help with awareness and recovery.

Keep your eye on the Sackler/Purdue Pharma case [1].

Purdue steered over $13B directly to the Sackler family by aggressively marketing opiates, misinforming doctors and the public about their dangers, and giving medical software companies kickbacks to push more addictive long-release versions of their opiates to doctors.

One company, Allscripts, was able to pay $145M to resolve criminal and civil kickback allegations [2].

They directly killed over 400,000 people between 1999 and 2017 and indirectly killed many more/caused unimaginable human suffering.

The family is proposing to pay $3B over 7 years and an additional $1.5B by selling off another company they own.

This is the real opiate crisis jackpot and the high-scale, high-powered, industrialized version of the crimes that are happening on the dark web.

I'm sure there are more large companies and high powered individuals involved and agree that the 200 arrests/$6M is an infinitely tiny drop in the bucket, but it's way easier to prove and stick than the larger operations.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-purdue-pharma-bankruptcy-...

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-purdue-pharma-investigati...

Yep - I agree, small wins are easier, and especially if you can use buzzwords like we do in tech. It also leaves more option for agent corruption to bring some of that cash home.

This possibly one reason why white collar crime is less punished (see: civil forfeiture - though more so that the likeliness of a successful court case is very low) - less money to take home because rich people will spend it all on lawyers if they have to, then use their connections to get right back on top.

The pharma companies getting people addicted on opioids killed pretty much nobody. For the most part they just created a hell of a lot of functional addicts. Not great but not the end of the world. The feds cutting a bunch of junkies off from their safe and legal suppliers and forcing them to source their fix from the black market was what killed a lot of people.

Obviously the stuff the pharma companies did should be punished but blaming them for the body count and all the other bad things that happened once the feds cracked down is nothing more than a typical exercise in government being unwilling to hold itself accountable.

This isn't data so I'm not refuting you, but I have several EMT acquaintances and basically all their stories are about repeat opiate addicts getting revived again and again until they are dead a few months later.

Ignoring the deaths, the economic drain of having so many people addicted to drugs and being unemployed/working at low function likely has had massive effects that are very difficult to measure.

Kinda feel catching a ton of distributors is a good deterrent form becoming one. Most are not thinking of this as a business tho, but as a form of some sort of liberation and are junkies themselves.

As all of history has shown, this doesn't work. Literally anyone can jump into their shoes, and for the most part, a lot of people are waiting to. There are a lot of poor people who will take an opportunity to get out of their status even with high risk.

Do any of these darknet markets or services operators ever successfully "exit" to enjoy their ill-gotten spoils in retirement?

Seems like they always get nailed in the end. Even the operator of Grams (darknet market search engine)and Helix (Bitcoin tumbler) who shut down his services in 2017 got arrested just this year. Seems like the heyday of Darknet markets was 5+ years ago and since then law enforcement started to win in a big way.

Who got away? Maybe the operators of Agora? Who else?

The cat is out of the bag. Sure a few close every year, but new ones start up. The risk is less than distributing anything on the streets, or dealing with anything physical.

Now they got 180 vendors by looking at data from last year, and probably by finding them at active markets and ordering from them and trying to backtrace mail, cross-reference the listings (someone got busted via a high res image that enabled law enforcement to acquire a fingerprint - and that was in the system).

But no news about any market shutdown.

And it probably takes a lot of work. The article claims that law enforcement got very good at this, but there's hardly any data to back this up.

The question is how many dealers there really are. If you look at the volumes of some of the arrested dealers, it seems like few people dominate these platforms. Arresting them is enough to disrupt the market for a bit. Sure, new ones will come but in the end, it could very well be that most sellers on these platforms will get arrested.

People are stupid and many won't be deterred by this. But I'm not sure if it's profitable in the long run to be a seller on these platforms.

For the buyer, on the other hand, it's much better. They don't face the risks they do when buying on the street and police doesn't really care unless they buy enough to be distributors themselves.

It seems the supply of people willing to risk a long-term incarceration for short-term gains is basically endless. And the ratio of those who then get greedy, and/or don't want to silently exit is also seems to be high.

That said, there are probably many-many thousands of people who are ex-dealers. And we'll probably never know about the ex-online-dealers, who had sufficiently good OpSec. (So maybe in 10 years we'll hear about some people who heard about those who did it for a few years and then silently quit.)

In crime there seems to be the oposite of survivor bias.

We see the successful legal businesses without seeing those that failed.

We see the failed drug dealers without seeing those that succeeded.

I imagine that this is intentional on the part of the state and the media to deter criminality. If the public message is “crime doesn’t pay” that might deter opportunists.

It is more an intrinsic to being a successful criminal.... if the public knows you are a criminal, so do the police and criminal justice system, since they are part of the public.

How would the government do what you are accusing them of? How would they hide successful drug dealers from the public?

other than a plot to cover things up (which is less likely because Occams razor), they simply don't know what they don't know.

I'm not sure if selling and shipping drugs to end customers was ever a good job to get into. Wholesale drug shipments maybe, but selling to end customers always had way too much risk for the money you could make there.

We shouldn't assume that people go into the business because it's rational to do so. They see the short term gains, not the long term risks.

I might be wrong but I think any criminal who really cared about long term risk adjusted gains stayed away from selling a few pills here and there.

This appears to be how most legal chemical manufacturers operate as well. Customers are just a huge hassle in general.

It is actually quite amazing how well drug logistics work. Even in countries with prohibition, you often have no problem getting some weed, I suspect other drugs being similarly well distributed. If have seen weed and other stuff packaged in high tech cases so even dogs couldn't sniff it out.

Especially with the amount of drug use, the logistical challenge isn't trivial.

You actually believe these FBI/DOJ notices that you can't hide? lol someone promote that public relations agent to a GS-15!

Darknet markets are bigger than ever, more hardened than ever, the investigations and busts are more expensive than ever and the results are smaller than ever.

This operation got a win because the server was seized and accessed. That part isn't supposed to happen.

Further hardening is that messages shouldn't be on the server. Everyone on Tor says use OTR on Jabber, EVERYONE.

On top of that, funds shouldn't be stored on the marketplaces, marketplace centralized escrow is still prevalent but multisignature is what should be used. (transaction is revertible by customer and merchant in the event that the escrow agent is incapacitated, customer and merchant can form a transaction again with the same funds elsewhere, or not, either way the state gets nothing whether they seized the server or seized the marketplace's wallets)

Next, bitcoin should be less used and Monero should become more used.

Monero with multisignature should become more used on top of that, which is not something I would consider "production ready" but following busts like this people might just prioritize developing it better.

There are a couple of inconvenient marketplaces that do all of the above. The user experience just has to improve.

After a certain level of abstraction the liability will shift away from the marketplace operators, or they'll evolve into completely unmanned autonomous organizations, in both cases they will both evolve into places where we really won't know where earnings go.

Yes, empire exited with 30 million in crypto.

Empire takedown is too recent to say they’ll end up getting away with it. Arrests often come well after the crime as mentioned by the GP.

unless they do something stupid (like come out of retirement and start funding their new operation with their unwashed existing loot), with every day that passes it's more likely that they won't get caught.

maybe you don't tend to hear about them?

Question: if you started an agency offering SEO and marketing to darknet sites, would you get in trouble for that?

Yes - IF any of your customers/clients did anything illegal. Proceeds of crime, KYC etc. I mean, think about it - what search terms would you optimize on? "Best weed in the market?" "Buy your murders here?" ... Good luck trying to explain away that you had zero knowledge of working with 'shady' customers. IANAL so go ahead if it seems to anyone to be a good idea.

Or perhaps you meant operating as a sort of entirely Dark-Web Only SEO operation? If so, they already exist.

CGMC shut down without taking peoples money and I haven't heard of any arrests for that yet

Evolution seemed to get away

If they do exit scam first? Was any of those caught?

Isn't the idea that you setup something like this, and run it for a while, and then you bailout and sell it to someone else and they do the same? It's a game of hot potato. So long as you don't leave too much evidence and you launder your currencies correctly, only the last owner gets caught.

Thats how the Dread Pirate Roberts got his name no?

The question is whether anyone has actually done that in reality rather than telling stories about the theory.

That a fascinating story that DPR told the judge (One of many), who did not believe one bit of it.

"Because a judge" isn't necessarily the be-all one might wish it to be. A judge is just human and brings along their beliefs and knowledge or lack of to every case.

Or the defendant was lying.... I don't think you or I know any more than the judge did (and we likely know way less)

Interestingly, Ross Ulbricht didn't claim to take over the site from others, he claimed to be the original creator, the original DPR, and then later handed it off to other people who got away.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9akg85/irs-found-accused-...

The idea is that you close suddenly stealing whatever money you can at the moment.

I don't find idea of black market operator stealing shocking nor unbelievable.

empire?

I've always wondered, why do these software engineers take such risks building and setting up these illegal marketplaces? I mean, are you really going to make that much more than you would as a regular software engineer at a company?

Most definitely a lot more than a regular software engineer. Alexandre Cazes was estimated to have a net worth of at least USD 23 mil, and that's a conservative estimate. This would all be in cryptocurrencies of course and you would have to find a way to money launder these assets. Another thing to consider is that many of these guys live in countries with cost of living much cheaper than USA (not even talking about Bay Area), Cazes himself was living in Thailand.

Alexandre Cazes is an interesting case that basically never gets mentioned in these threads.

It's questionable whether he was doing it alone or even the head operator. But apparently it's all case closed now with no Dread Pirate Roberts type sensational court cases or extradition trial.

Also which country had him executed? I'm very certain it wasn't Thailand.

Are you implying he didn't commit suicide[§]?

§ https://web.archive.org/web/20170714143352/https://www.deepd...

§ http://www.tvanouvelles.ca/2017/07/12/dark-web-le-quebecois-...

§ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/07/report-alphabay-...

§ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/alphabay-suspected-cof...

§ https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/massive-blow-to-...

§ https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/alphabay-largest-online-dark-...

It's more likely that Epstein's case was a suicide than Cazes' in my opinion.

Absolutely. There was so much fuckery surrounding his apparent suicide I'm still surprised nothing came of it.

He’s dead now. Was it worth it?

It definitely wasn't worth it for him.

Are you implying he didn't commit suicide?

Not at all.

It's very lucrative and the competition is pretty inept so expectations are low. You can retire to thailand off the residuals. If you're a 20 year old who isn't looking forward to decades of corporate work that might not sound bad.

This was something that always boggled my mind how inept these guys sometimes were. In this business your life literally (and I mean literally) depends on good security and they would make some really rookie mistakes.

It's human. Mistakes can sometimes be really subtle and require only a moment's inattention but sound REALLY dumb when you look at it in fundamental terms.

Christ, trained CIA field agents with funding and support staff have made some really stupid mistakes en par. Things like being tracked by metadata from not turning off their cell phone because they thought a chip bag was a good enough faraday cage. Ostensibly it sounds dumb, but that might have only been one time for 20 minutes or something that allowed the Italian investigators to connect the dots.

Perfect security for a short time period with one incident is actually still really hard. When you make it a lifestyle going on for months/years, it's nearly impossible.

Many many CIA agents sent into China have disappeared. If an agency with the greatest set of resources on earth are getting busted regularly what hope does the average Joe software engineer have.

> Many many CIA agents sent into China have disappeared.

Source? This doesn't sound like the sort of thing with reliable public statistics?

These aren’t agents sent into China, but assets in China who were arrested/killed. 18 to 20 between 2010-2012

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spie...

On the other hand, many get away with it.

Proper air gap maintained religiously should be able to solve a lot of problems in cyber crime. After all, we still interface with computers through meat and bones.

Yes, it's just the maintaining it religiously part that's surprisngly hard.

Like, things and emergencies come up just like they do in a normal business but you have to go all the way back into secure mode to address them.

That process takes time and effort. Cleaning runs to location where you connect, switching hardware, activating all the vpn chains or tor connection, etc etc. Coordinating occasional OTP key exchanges, time/location randomization, etc. ...you didn't slip up and get lazy with the entropy generating your "secure" encryption key did you? You have to find drop shipping locations and those expire or go wrong.

Or there was a car at location X which is a choke point that is technically on your list of triggers for counter surveillance but it's 7PM on a Friday and that cute girl you're supposed to meet is waiting. Do you assume the worst and burn everything, re-do your secure connection point or just ignore it and go through your usual process since 99/100 it's likely to be a false alarm? Or hey, the delivery guy was a day late on the 1-day shipping you used to limit the time frame the agencies could use to get a warrant, and now it's outside your predetermined acceptable window. Do you have the discipline to take the loss and refuse the package?

You get the idea. It's exhausting and people make one stupid mistake and get called out on the internet for being a moron.

The difference between impunity and immunity.

State actors (officials) even acting internationally (outside jurisdiction), tend to have a high level of immunity from legal sanction. Independent and non-state actors less so.

The CIA agent might blow cover or case but usually gets out alive and remains free. The DarkNet criminal, not so much.

I was looking at this once

One reason they are inept is those guys usually end up doing all the work themselves, for security reasons (you won't tell random people "hey I will run a drug empire, will you help me?").

So there is a lot to do when you need to build the platform yourself from the ground up; plus, you need to spend a lot of time on moderation and spammers and attackers; and, you need to make the platform easy to use, which sometimes goes against security; read any forum for darknet markets and people always struggle with basic PGP usage. (PGP is used for encryption in darknet markets; Signal-like protocols leak way too much metadata.)

Also, people that are good at infosec will not start doing this risky stuff, as they can do something better.

There used to be a market that required PGP in all messages, and users hated that, from what I remember.

I no longer visit forums for this stuff, but look up "dred", darknet market forum.

I always wondered, why are none of the darknets operated from some "rogue state" (like North Korea) or militia-controlled areas, like FARC in Colombia. Or by actual mafias in Russia or Ukraine. But I guess even they are not that dumb and focus on what they know how to do, rather than branching into darknet.

All it takes is one rookie mistake and it wipes out the other 99.9% perfect. Yes, there are guys and girls that can do 100% of what you need to run a darknet market perfectly, but they are typically in very high demand on the employment market, so their acceptable risk to reward ratio makes participation in criminal conspiracies very unlikely. So crime naturally selects for half-asses.

That's ALL criminals for you. They can be very smart and yet consistently commit silly and avoidable mistakes.

That's all criminals that you know about, because they got caught.

Well there are three classes really. (1) Criminals who got caught. (2) Crimes that were obviously committed, but were never solved. (3) And crimes that were performed so well that we don't even know they happened.

I think you would be very hard-pressed to create a large scale drug marketplace in category 3. Thus we can look at ratio of 1 and 2, to see how clever criminals are.

Samuel Little is a perfect example of some one category 3, that was eventually caught...

He was charged with 4 counts of murder in 2013, but in 2018 he was connected to a murder in Texas. Further investigations connected him to over 50 murders over almost 40 years, but he claims 93. The police hadn't connected ANY of the murders until he was picked up on narcotics charges and his DNA matched a bunch of cases in LA. He'd been in and out of jail 26 times between '61 and '75 for lessor charges, and was even charged with murder in '82, but was acquitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Little

Large marketplaces are know to enough people. Had one operated for super long, it would be known.

That's all people.

Some people can’t make a stable living in regular jobs, so they resort to some form of crime. And it takes very little to add “Anybody can make money on the internet. Zuck did it and he’s a dropout.” and “Drugs make money” together.

The rest of the story tells itself.

Just like anyone, they make mistakes.

Think of the most boneheaded thing that you did in the last two years, then imagine that could have been the one mistake that gets you busted.

Also they probably get complacent about the whole thing eventually.

Maybe the type of personality willing to gamble it all on running a drug market isn't they type to dot their i's and cross their t's.

In most of the world working as a SWE is a middle-class job. Six figure salaries and RSUs are really only a thing in a few top US and EU cities.

Six figure (albeit lower end of that, and without RSUs) SWE jobs exist in quantity all over the U.S. There isn't a single state where you shouldn't expect to be getting a six figure salary with no more than 5 years working experience as an SWE - and I think saying even 5 years is generous.

I think it probably comes down to a combination of Ego and/or Thrill. They think they are too smart to get caught and they get a thrill out of outsmarting people (until they're not).

Whenever I see this it makes me think that making money by breaking the law is like playing a video game on cheat mode. Nearly anybody can make money illegally, but the consequences don't usually outweigh the benefits. So, it's almost pointless. The game that is much more gratifying is making lots of money by playing the game on hard mode.

Why do criminals do crimes?

If you want to break the law and you happen to be a SWE, I don't think it makes much difference.

I'm not sure if this was your implication (I may be reading too far into your relatively succinct comment), but I don't think most "criminals" do crimes because they explicitly want to break the law. I would imagine that there are about as many potential reasons for doing things that happen to be against the law as there are for doing things that don't happen to be against the law.

I'm not even all that sure what qualifies someone to be considered a "criminal." Is it simply breaking the law, which virtually everyone has done at some point? Is it getting caught committing a criminal act? Getting caught committing a felony-level offense? Is someone who smokes cannabis in Kansas (illegal) a criminal, but not someone who smokes cannabis across the state border with Colorado (legal)? What if the smoker from Kansas crosses the border into Colorado - are they no longer a criminal? What if the smoker from Colorado smoked cannabis before it became legal to so - did they stop being a criminal when cannabis was legalized? What if the smoker from Colorado walks across the border into Kansas - are they a criminal for having smoked cannabis in Colorado, given that doing so is illegal in Kansas? This list could continue, but it's probably already bordering on pedantic... Point being, if breaking the law is all it takes to be considered a criminal, aren't we all criminals?

Criminals will do crime. The thing that always buffles me is WHO buys heroin, cocaine, weed, etc. over the internet.. Aren't they scared that DHL, FedEx, USPS will scan/sniff the packages? Or they use "Drug delivery express"?

Or they buy online and they meet someone in a parking lot for the pick-up? Why not buy then and there then?

As we see in the movies, most drug trafficking is a drive-by thing.. is it not?

I don't think there are "criminals" as a type of person like "musicians", who are just compelled to do crime because there's an inner force that just makes their toe tap a certain way.

Maybe some small fraction, I guess.

But I think the majority of criminals are simply rational actors, who look at the incentives and the odds, assess them (sometimes wrongly), and do what seems sensible to achieve their goals. The goal is not "do crime", the goal is "make money" and the environment is structured such that crime makes money.

Having drugs sent to you is not proof that you bought them. I mean, it'd be too easy to blackmail someone if I could just send you a 'package' and then drop a tip @OurFriendsInBlue, no?

That said, if you keep getting busted with marching powder in your magazines, at some point people will stop accepting that excuse ;)

Having drugs sent to you is evidence you bought them. Maybe not conclusive evidence by itself, but certainly good evidence. Almost certainly there would be corroborating evidence such as drugs paraphernalia, financial transactions, positive blood test, internet history, etc

You are unlikely to get caught because you are unlikely to have the package intercepted. If it is, you should expect to be convicted.

I was misunderstood, my bad, bad writing.

My question/wondering was on: why the hell would someone buy drugs online, and how to they accept the risk on consuming these when they arrive. Buying an iPhone cable online is a risk I can accept. Buying heroin online (I don't do drugs) it goes beyond me on the risk acceptance of such deed.

I get it that darkweb has a scoring system like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, but heroin? Cocaine? Weed?

It is not about "police can't charge you" it is about "who the hell is going to inject something that was bought on the darkweb in their veins??

What goes through their mind? I assume not much since these are people who buy heroin, online.. so that answers my question.

Well it's a direct market, customer service is king.

The sellers cannot really move their 'brand' from one market to another. An opportunist could reserve their username on another market, and users know that anyone could be behind that new account. They don't trust the name, only the reviews you have on your particular market.

What I want to say is that the reputation of their anonymous brand is worth something, because they can't take it somewhere in a hurry and takes time to build (if you build it legitimately, it always seems easy to cheat with a bot).

Reviews from other users, (who also have a visible reputation, to combat botting), are taken seriously. The markets themselves provide escrow, if you screw your users and don't have a high standing you're likely won't be receiving payment.

This incentivizes sellers to provide a high level of customer service.

"So, in order to attract customers in this high stakes and very competitive situation, you need the highest possible rating."[0]

"This may help to explain why drugs bought on the dark web tend to be much purer than drugs bought on the street. "[0]

[0]:https://unbabel.com/blog/customer-service-dark-web/

> The sellers cannot really move their 'brand' from one market to another. An opportunist could reserve their username on another market, and users know that anyone could be behind that new account. They don't trust the name, only the reviews you have on your particular market.

Sellers can move their brand across markets with a different username because they would still have the same PGP key. There's even a search engine to find the same vendor on multiple markets by looking them up by their PGP key.

> My question/wondering was on: why the hell would someone buy drugs online, and how to they accept the risk on consuming these when they arrive.

The alternative is buying them in person, where the dealer you have worked with for years may have been flipped last week.

And it's not like injecting something you bought from your dealer doesn't have similar risk factors. Why do you think overdoses have been skyrocketing over the past decade?

The amount of fentanyl and similar compounds on the street sounds just awful now. I can't imagine buying an E in the club or wherever from a stranger in this day and age.

Low level purchasers don’t seem to be targeted in these busts. They are after the suppliers. The risk of buying from a darknet market is probably lower than buying from a local dealer, especially for a consumer who doesn’t have any connections. You could go looking for someone dealing on the street, but you won’t know if their stuff has five star reviews. Or you might just get mugged.

Not something I have firsthand experience of, but I believe that the sellers are rated in part on the quality of their delivery. It comes through regular post to the buyers door. But that’s no implication of crime so as a regular consumer it’s fairly safe.

Aside from that, the quality of Darknet drugs is significantly better than street drugs. The drugs people (used to) buy on the street have been through a lot of hands and there’s often little substance left at the end. Also, who you going to complain to? At least with a marketplace, sellers are looking for good ratings. It’s also a lot cheaper. I’ve heard nothing but good reports from people buying online.

>>> I mean, are you really going to make that much more than you would as a regular software engineer at a company?

Hell yeah.

I mean, what companies could they possibly work for? Google? Accenture?

These only have offices in a handful of cities across the planet. You have zero job prospects as a software engineer as a person living in countryside Asia or Latin America or even Europe outside of metro areas. You might as well try to build your own web business.

Not everyone focuses solely on cash in life, and for some the thought of becoming a 'regular software engineer at a company' might be existentially boring.

This is the reason my regular dealer sold various items when I was in college.

He figured he had the rest of his life to be boring, but the excitement of dealing was too tempting right now to turn down. I'm betting a lot of the people running these sorts of things are in that area; it's just too interesting to try and too much adrenaline at times.

Also, are you named after just general detritus, or the Pratchett character?

ha, I quite like the idea of General Detritus! Just detritus generally. It's strange for me as I've been using it for so long now, my mind skips a beat and I feel like I've had a post update whenever I come across the word IRL :)

I've actually just picked up my first ever Pratchett - "Small Gods" - after having somehow avoided reading him for the past 30 years!

"Detritus was the first troll member of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch..." - I'll look forward to that, thanks!

> why do these software engineers take such risks

I blame ageism in Tech. Where else should we go except jumping the Ättestupa[1][2] /s :-)

I guess everyone is different, but if you read the story behind Paul LeRoux[3] there is a lot more to becoming a criminal (including personal hardship and a pre-existing proneness for Denning Kruger - which seems more rampant in our field than anywhere else). And like learning vi / emacs it's actually really hard, so once you get very good in this it's hard to stop

(I'm trying too hard to be funny and understand my analogy sounds ludicrous but there are psychological concepts at work which connect difficulty/struggle of a task with whether we can identify with what we are doing and if it fulfills us. Ofc there is also that who else would do this kind of work if not a software/security engineer.)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwD7f5ZWhAk

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%84ttestupa

[3] https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind

I think you answered your own question as I am pretty sure they really do get paid that much more. The same thinking goes into starting a business or becoming self-employed. The people I have met doing those for longer than a year seem to make more than the people working full time jobs.

Not everybody is living in USA or country with strong currency

Yes, you make a lot more and you don't actually get busted.

Money! And they think they are smarter than those who failed

For some it has been highly profitable, and many of them have strongly libertarian style personal beliefs.

It’s hilarious how small these busts are. 179 people, 500 kg of drugs, $6.5 million of cash/crypto? $6.5 million probably doesn’t build the entryway to the “Sackler gallery.”

The Sacklers bought their own politicians and shared a part of the loot with the industry whereas small time crime never contributes into that pool and takes away profit from that. Think about it, people who buy drugs illegally could instead drop a few hundred dollars (without an insurance) on a doctors' visit to get the prescription prescription and a few hundred dollars on the actual drugs and they'd have the legal stamp on them - plus the warning not to operate any motorized vehicle on the label. :)

I sometimes enjoy taking psychedelics in a safe environment with good people and darknets are invaluable for sourcing them. I simply don't have enough contacts to be able to source them otherwise. I'm a tax paying and responsible citizen who knows how to use tor + tails + monero...and dang it...I'm going to. I have the right to control my consciousness as long as I don't harm others. If you are interested, start by searching for Dread in duckduckgo on the tor browser. Be careful. Measure 10x, cut once.

Let the record show the FBI just proved that the FBI does not need to circumvent encryption or a backdoor in order to catch criminals. Great!

I agree with your broader point, but I doubt they ever claimed that?

I don't think the FBI would ever say that without cracking encryption they'd catch no criminals. Only that many who don't get caught today _would_ be.

Two of the biggest dark web criminals are serving a combined 16 1/2 years in federal prison. One is a former Secret Service agent and the other is a former DEA agent.

Any source on that?

Any real reason you can't google it other than being worried about the big G knowing what you looked up?

https://www.wired.com/2016/02/corrupt-silk-road-investigator...

"Operation DisrupTor"

The docs are here:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/documents-related-september-22-2...

I assume there's at least something interesting in there about how they actually did the disruption. It'll be interesting to see the technical details once they come out.

Maybe a "How we disrupted tor during Operation DisrupTor" talk at defcon next year :-)

Probably a healthy dose of 'parallel construction' going on based on secret evidence.

I don't quite understand the dark market, but I assume they basically rely on postal services to transfer most of the drugs. I'm pretty sure, probably starting with the anthrax mailings 20 years ago, that the USPS records images and itineraries for all packages and mail flowing through the system. Combine that with cell phone data and surveillance footage and you have a method of detecting who sent the drugs that the government ordered from the dark web vendors.

You also have other possibilities to consider, such as DNA evidence in the packages.

I would be very worried if I was committing any sort of major crime these days, unless I had the protection of a government. The tools are all there to catch nearly everyone committing a crime if they are motivated enough.

Yeah, this likely isn't on disrupting Tor. There are loads of other targets on Tor which have been around for a relatively long time. The cops figured out how to nail people some other way.

I’m fairly certain there will be another well researched Darknet Diaries[1] episode in a view months.

[1]https://darknetdiaries.com/

Wow, thanks for the tip, looks like a great podcast!

    Thus, the warrant I am applying for would permit
    law enforcement personnel to, with respect to any device     
    that appears to have a biometric sensor and falls within 
    the scope of the warrant: (1) depress BERMUDEZ’s thumb- 
    and/or fingers on the device(s); and (2) hold the 
    device(s) in front of BERMUDEZ’s face with his or her eyes 
    open to activate the facial-, iris-, and/or retina- 
    recognition feature.

These documents read like an instruction manual of what not to do (use biometrics in this case). Upmost of which is commit a crime, but if criminals knew to read these docs first, they'd be much harder to catch i suppose.

[1]: https://www.justice.gov/opa/page/file/1318666/download

Indeed. There was an HN post on the dark web markets a week or two ago. The cops identified the package and informed the post office. They called the recipient and said "there was an issue with the address on your package, can you come down and pick it up?"

If you know you're receiving drugs through the USPS that should have been a huge tip off and his response should have been "I'm not expecting a package. It's not mine."

Plus it doesn't make sense. If they know his number to call him, why can't they just confirm the address from him and deliver it?

I had the same thought.

To which they'd respond "Yeah right, put the kettle on we'll be right over"

Still a better alternative than claiming the package...

What are they going to do? Force him to pick up a package he says isn’t his?

Isn’t it funny how they end up chasing the users of a technology they themselves established.

This is based on half-remembered pseudo-technical details of how TOR works but my understanding is that the most effective way to compromise someone's connection through The Onion Router is to control their entrance and exit nodes.

So my initial assumption is that the bulk of the work would be in gaining and confirming that control and the rest would likely be "trivial" analysis of traffic through those gateways.

> the most effective way to compromise someone's connection through The Onion Router is to control their entrance and exit nodes

This seems like a big problem since there’s not much incentive, other than altruism, for most people to run Tor nodes, especially exit nodes which will draw a lot of unwanted attention from law enforcement.

On the other hand, intelligence agencies have a large incentive to control a majority of Tor nodes.

It’s also pretty telling that Tor was partially developed and funded by the US government.

> It’s also pretty telling that Tor was partially developed and funded by the US government.

Times were different then. The US was fighting wars to topple dictators and spread democracy.

Now they seem to want to topple democracy and spread dictators.

What makes you say this? Because we elected someone you disagree with?

Because you elected someone constitutionally unfit to hold the office, a lying cheating philandering sociopath who cheated on his wife with a porn star after she gave birth, has literally dozens of serious sexual misconduct allegation etc.

Yet none of the above matters, what matters is the entire GOP been willing to cover for all off the above and worse, throwing out centuries of political norms to “win” and by doing so enable the worst president in a century to do all off the things above and worse.

This is a man who is a systemic risk to an already creaky system and I have a vested interest in the US doing well.

His inaction has led to a massive death toll, he overtly politicised a pandemic then let his family control where supplies went for political reasons.

The best thing the man could do for America is have a stroke.

The US military funded tor to give its employees a way to use the internet without divulging to the US's adversaries what sites they were reading.

Does this work with hidden services though? There’s no exit node when you visit a .onion site, because client meets server inside the circuit.

I suppose there’s still two entrance nodes, one for each side. But unlike visiting the clearnet over Tor, neither side is aware of both at the same time.

Sort of correct. There was a recent attack that provisioned a bunch of high bandwidth servers to establish their 'rankings' and then launched a DDOS against other Entry Guards (effectively knocking them off-line) to increase the chances that their range of high bandwidth servers were picked by both parties for the Tor connection. (Citation available but the Tor project blog has the details for those curious).

I feel like someone should pause just for a moment to note the brilliance of a criminal syndicate with the name "PillCosby"

Here are two metrics that law enforcement might use to measure their “war on drugs”:

1. The total amount of drugs imported into or produced within the country. This measures the problems related to addiction.

2. The total number of drug dealers in the country. This is a measure of social problems related to gangs/violence etc.

The dark web changes the game because the D2C model competes against gangs and offers law enforcement an easy choke point on producers and importers. We should be careful not to send the market back to the streets.

Personally I’d rather live in a society without drugs. Right now it is not legal to use drugs, nor is it legal to exclude drug users.

What an amazing waste of taxpayer's money.

I keep hearing about alternative WWW internets, I'm surprised TOR based shops haven't moved.

Like what? Tor itself is never the reason they were caught as far as anyone knows.

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