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Comment by hristov | Hacker News Reader

c.) the person you are buying from is an actual police agency.

The police use undercover drug dealers on the streets. Why wouldn't they use them online, where it is much cheaper and safer.

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There are reputation systems on most sites. Unless the site operator was in on it or they were actually providing product, they would not get a lot of addresses.

This is a good point. I've also heard stories of cops busting people and then forcing them or strongly encouraging them to leave a review to keep the ball rolling.

Who says they have to bust you immediately? How long-term can a sting run? Why not collect addresses for six months, and then wrangle up hundreds of purchasers?

That's what I meant with having to provide product. If they don't deliver they will receive bad reviews. I do not know if it is legal for American law enforcement to sell drugs, though.

This would be a U.S problem then I guess. Most places in Europe don't allow entrapment, and policymakers typically have the sense to target dealers vs consumers anyways.

Because cracking down on drug buyers is low-priority for law enforcement.

Also in other countries (like Canada) police don't even care about drug use as it's not illegal. So purchasing grams of a substance wouldn't even be worth a raid as they'll not find anything to charge you with and the fallout would be greater than the reward.

The political fallout in Canada for running a raid where nothing is found is massive. Warrant mistakes have landed police agencies on the front pages for weeks, if it came out they were doing raids based on next to no police work, not only would the police be under fire but the judges would be too.

Drug use/possession is not illegal in Canada? When did that change?

Possession is illegal, albeit laxly enforced. Drug use has never been illegal in Canada.

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