

Inside the Deep Web Drug Lab - steven
https://medium.com/backchannel/inside-the-deep-web-drug-lab-9718cd0fe504

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sixQuarks
What a great service. What most people don't realize is the majority of
ecstacy-related deaths are due to non-ecstasy pills. The drug war is one of
the most futile and frustrating things in the modern world.

~~~
selectodude
Drugs will ruin your life, and if by chance they don't, the Government will
finish the job.

~~~
wz1000
Most of the issues that afflict drug users stem from their illegality.

1\. Drugs are frequently adulterated because of lack of any regulation.
Adulterants are responsible for most of the side effects of heroin use. The
only side effect of pure heroin is constipation.

2\. Again, purity of drugs varies a lot, so there is no proper information
available about dosages. This leads to overdoses.

3\. Drug users are denied jobs and treatment, so they cannot get their lives
on track even if they want to.

4\. Money from drug sales is entirely in black, and is used to fuel further
illegal activity.

5\. Drug users don't have access to clean needles and safe paraphernalia,
which leads to spread of blood-borne diseases and injuries.

All of these problems simply go away with legalization and regulation.

~~~
ketralnis
That's a very cherry-picked list of problems.

* Drugs are addictive and expensive. Not all of this expense is due to costs of avoiding enforcement. This can and does drive users to poverty, which has its own correlation with crime outside of drug enforcement itself

* Not all overdosing is due to "no proper information available about dosages". I'd wager that few overdoses are from first-time users, so the overdoser has _some_ information about their own previous dosages at the very least.

> Drug users are denied jobs and treatment, so they cannot get their lives on
> track even if they want to.

If the only problem with drugs is that they are illegal, why do they need
treatment? Can we agree that an addict that wants treatment would need it
whether the drug is legal or not? And that some people don't do it, or can't
afford it, regardless of its legality (see: alcohol)?

I'm pro-legalisation, but you're hardly making a good case here by picking
strawmen and showing how easy it is to beat them down.

~~~
wz1000
> Not all overdosing is due to "no proper information available about
> dosages". I'd wager that few overdoses are from first-time users, so the
> overdoser has some information about their own previous dosages at the very
> least

The purity of drugs varies a lot, and a couple of missed steps of dilution and
adulteration can easily lead to overdoses.

> If the only problem with drugs is that they are illegal, why do they need
> treatment? Can we agree that an addict that wants treatment would need it
> whether the drug is legal or not? And that some people don't do it, or can't
> afford it, regardless of its legality (see: alcohol)?

I didn't say all, I said "most" of the problem with drugs is that they are
illegal.

The problem is that the current system does absolutely nothing to combat the
problems both you and I mention. It is a huge waste of money, time, life and
resources. Sticking addicts who need treatment in jail does nothing to solve
the problem.

Legalization, harm-reduction and proper education seems to be the way to go.
Current "abstinence-only" drug education simply doesn't cut it. Informing
users about both the risks and benefits of drug use in an unbiased, non-
judgemental way would be much more effective.

All this doesn't even take into account the philosophical argument that an
adult should be free to put whatever they want into their own bodies. You
can't stop people from making poor life decisions.

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GordonS
This is a _really_ good idea and uptake of services like this, and sharing the
information generated, could help increase the quality of products sold on
darknet markets, and ultimately save lives.

I'd love to see something like this in the UK, and ideally it would be a bit
cheaper.

Ideally such services should be ran by governments, which could also help to
ensure that items mailed to their addresses are not seized.

~~~
wz1000
Then you have the moral police complaining that the government is promoting
drug usage.

~~~
duaneb
Maybe drug usage shouldn't be considered a "moral" decision....

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CoffeeDregs
There is/was a similar organization in California called DanceSafe (which
friends used). Still there: [http://dancesafe.org/](http://dancesafe.org/) You
could/can mail them pills and they would test them for content ratios (not
content amounts). Fantastic service to reduce harm.

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rwmj
Interesting that the marketplace they talk about (Evolution) closed down a
couple of weeks ago with evidence of a huge Bitcoin scam. Seems you can test
the honesty of the sellers but not the market :-(

[http://www.deepdotweb.com/2015/03/18/interview-with-
nswgreat...](http://www.deepdotweb.com/2015/03/18/interview-with-nswgreat-
evolution-staff-member/)

~~~
wz1000
Multisig solves that problem.

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bkudria
In the US: [http://www.ecstasydata.org/](http://www.ecstasydata.org/)

~~~
pakled_engineer
There's also pillreports.com a basic review site to identify bad street pills

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pcthrowaway
I wonder how the deep web can protect against two things happening:

\- users who have an interest in promoting one of the vendors providing them
with positive reviews, while other vendors receive negative reviews

\- users who are known for reviewing samples receiving higher-quality orders

Surely there's a way to keep the vendors honest in a more long-term way, as
well as gauge the consistency of each, but it eludes me right now.

~~~
rwmj
The same way these things are / are not dealt with in the "ordinary" web. Ebay
must have precisely the same issues.

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discardorama
I hate to be pedantic, but "Deep Web" is the part of the Web that crawlers
can't reach, because it's hidden behind POST requests and JS actions[1], and
not nefariously. "Dark Web" is the term they're looking for.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Web](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Web)

~~~
skizm
> She is holding the lab’s latest delivery of a drug bought from the “deep
> web,” the clandestine corner of the internet that isn’t reachable by normal
> search engines...

Seems like they used the term correctly.

~~~
shubb
Trouble is, the academics talking about deep web don't mean a clandestine
corner. They more mean private Facebook pages and uncrawlable product
catalogues. Stuff that is part of the normal internet though.

It's kinda silly semantics now though, most people seem to use it to talk
about illicit hidden stuff. It's like saying, that's not a Hoover it's a
vacuume cleaner.

This particular article is a bit annoying though because the writer is either
confused, trolling, or avoiding describing technical specifics for ethical
raisins. Best kind of raisin.

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Speakeasys
That dude looks like a straight dealer. Lol. DoctorX.

But yes I agree if someone is going to put harmful chemicals in their body
they might as well prevent any further damage to their body and reduce risk of
complications.

