Report says drugs from online stores tend to be high in purity

A new report suggests drugs bought from the darknet are higher in purity than those purchased from street dealers.

In Chapter Six of The Internet and Drug Markets, exploring quality and harm reduction on deep web store Silk Road, it's mentioned that drugs bought online tended to be as described.

An FBI statement from 2013 reads: "Samples of these purchases have been laboratory tested and have typically shown high purity levels of the drug the item was advertised to be on Silk Road."

Relating to this, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) report states users of the deep web - part of the World Wide Web not accessible by standard search engines - felt satisfied enough to return thanks to the rating system.

"Users felt they were getting value for money. The user feedback model that works so well on sites such as eBay was just as effective on the black market.

"Sellers had the incentive of repeat business to ensure their product was as described. Regular online black market users were sophisticated when it came to spotting padded or faked feedback."

In comparison, drug users buying 'ecstasy' from dealers on the street "discovered that, instead of MDMA, the main ingredient in their pills was inferior piperazines or PMA (para-Methoxyamphetamine)," the chemical believed to be in these Superman pills and explored in our Killer Pills: Myth or Murder? feature from 2014.

Read the rest of the report here.

Dave Turner is Mixmag's Digital News Editor, follow him on Twitter here