> Aside from offering a hands-on account of how the Silk Road worked from a dealer’s perspective, Duch’s story calls into question claims that the Silk Road reduced violence by moving drug sales from the street to the relative safety of the internet. Duch’s testimony seemed to suggest that he wouldn’t have sold drugs at all if it weren’t for the Silk Road...

Wow. What a stupendous flaw in logic and reasoning. I guess I'm glad that the fool who wrote this isn't in charge of building bridges or something, where his astonishing stupidity could directly get people killed. He'll just have to settle for indirectly getting people killed by parroting state propaganda and perpetuating the war on drugs.

Obviously, the fact that different people were dealing the drugs on the Silk Road, than on the street, does not in any way serve as evidence that Silk Road did not reduce the risk to both dealers and especially users, in buying drugs.

I mean, it seems like Ulbricht really did put out hits on some people - or at least the state is pressing ahead with the charges anyway, and if that's the case he is a danger to society and needs to be locked up. But in terms of harm reduction Silk Road was pretty awesome (fwiw, I never used the service). Not only did it derisk buying and selling drugs, in many cases it would have taken money directly out of the pockets of large drug cartels (i.e. in cases where they didn't control the supply anyway, only the distribution). That's a cause everyone should get behind.

The whole ordeal here just drives the point home, that the drug war is not at all about harm reduction for anybody, not users, certainly not dealers, and not even society at large. I'm not sure the drug war is about anything at this point. It's just a self-perpetuating relic of the past, and it needs to be put down ASAFP.