Prompted by “The online drug market: How much marijuana is sold this way?”: http://www.thecannabist.co/2015/08/13/online-drug-market-marijuana-sales/39370/
Overall, the Carnegie Mellon researchers argued, their findings suggest that going after these markets is a cat-and-mouse game law enforcement may not be able to win.
“We suggest a re-evaluation of intervention policies against anonymous marketplaces,” the wrote. “Given the high demand for the products being sold, it is not clear that take-downs will be effective; at least we have found no evidence they were.”
Some research suggests that buying drugs online is safer than buying them from street dealers. One recent survey of 100,0000 drug users found that many believed that buying from online vendors reduces their risk of physical violence or ending up with a tainted product.
As a quick aside, the above snippet comes from The Washington Post — a professional writing entity. Meaningless typos are fine in communications by unprofessional writers (and even one mistake here and there is okay professionally), but the two above in one relatively small snippet make them (and therefore me in this case) look bad. What number is 100,0000? You want to add a “y” to “the wrote”? Tell your editor to start getting the job done right (or hire another editor).
In short, take the failed model of arresting drug dealers, which leads to temporary gaps in supply that are promptly filled (for several decades and counting basically without any mainstream media challenge regarding that key point), add the serious power of the Internet allowing a drug dealer to completely expand customer reach globally, and we have an extremely terrible example of “pouring gasoline on the fire to put it out”.
Sarcastic kudos to proponents of Certain Drug Prohibition. As essentially our government (including law enforcement), you essentially own the mainstream media by your effective monopoly on providing consistent information involving tragic events (what the mainstream media clearly loves to report), so you still largely own the public consensus built entirely on reason abuse (a “house of cards” that only needs mainstream media correction towards journalistically ethical truth to fall).
Meanwhile, way too many people are suffering worldwide, solely because your entire funding is contingent upon sustaining the black market for illicit drugs (especially the plant that makes up the vast majority of the war on some drugs; cannabis — a safe product when used properly, despite clearly unscientific claims of science to the contrary that still only go as far as suggesting that “heavy use” or abuse “may” or “can” cause harm, so don’t actually back up tough-talking affirmations of cannabis harm).
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