
A Heroin Dealer Tells the Silk Road Jury What It Was Like to Sell Drugs Online - edward
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/silk-road-heroin-dealer-testifies/
======
cmdkeen
There are a few interesting takeaways: \- Pain perscriptions as a gateway to
more hardcore drug use that destroys life, it doesn't sound like this
individual had any "liberty" to make choices once he had become hooked on
painkillers

\- Heroin addictions are incredibly expensive in monetary terms, at $3,500 a
week the price reduction would have to be huge before any legal drug wouldn't
continue to create acquisitive crime to fund it

\- Heroin addictions are incredibly expensive in terms of destroyed careers
and relationships. Sure some users function normally, but you cannot know
whether you're going to succumb or not before embarking - and that is the
problem.

~~~
nostrademons
There's historical precedent for legalized heroin - it's the opium dens of the
mid/late 19th century. I don't think that's a world that many people want to
go back to.

Most of the time when people talk about drug legalization, they mean things
like marijuana, LSD, or ecstasy.

~~~
byEngineer
why not to legalize something that hurts just the one who takes it? The same
logic would require us to delegalize alcohol. Remember, we had booze dealers
with machine guns terrorizing whole cities, like Chicago, before we came back
to our senses and legalized it.

Can you see Corona dealers fighting with Coors dealers for a territory to sell
beer? Why not? This is the _EXACT_ reality of 1920s in this country.

I don't care if some idiots are going to kill themselves. As if we didn't have
enough economic issues and ways to spend money, to spend so much on prisons,
police force and all this other BS to deal with somebody's addiction.

I will tell you what will happen. As 1929 crash forced us to legalize alcohol,
the same way 2008 forced us to legalize weed. Hopefully next crash will force
us to legalize rest of it and start making money on it to find education vs.
taking money from education to keep juvenile institutions staffed with guards.

~~~
afro88
From what I understand, heroin when injected is so addictive that using it
even once can put you on a path you never would have gone anywhere near. It
takes rational thought out of the occasion, changes your personality and your
goals - your life becomes about getting your next fix and you'll do anything
to get it.

Beer, weed, ecstacy, etc don't have that same steep addictive power, so aren't
dangerous in that way. So it can't be so easily compared to alcohol since
alcohol has a much more gradual addiction curve whereas heroin is much much
steeper.

~~~
tP5n
That's utter nonsense. Do you realize heroin is a fancy name for
diacetylmorphine, an analgesic commonly used to treat chronic and post-
surgical pain?

In other words, thousands of people around the world received that 'one shot'
today and if you didn't tell them, probably wouldn't even know they just had a
hit of h (and none of them suddenly loses their ability for rational thought
or their life's goals).

~~~
afro88
Thousands of people are given heroin-like (or actually heroin in your case)
pain killers for chronic and post-surgical pain and move onto illegal forms
like heroin after because they're addicted. Like the dude in the article.

"One shot" is an exaggeration, apologies. My point was that heroin and it's
analogues are highly addictive substances, in an aggressive way that beer weed
and ecstacy aren't. You can't directly compare and equate beer with heroin for
the sake of argument for legalization. Drugs aren't equal and the addictive
properties of one are different from another. They have to be considered on a
case by case basis.

~~~
atom-morgan
It's also worth watching episode 7 of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown where
he goes back home to Massachusetts. A large portion of the episode is focused
on this.

You have kids in high school who are injured in sports, are prescribed
painkillers by their doctors which eventually gets them on heroin. The addicts
didn't wake up one day thinking, "You know what? I think I'm going to try
heroin today." It was legal pharmaceuticals with falsely advertised addiction
rates that got them onto it.

------
madaxe_again
It reads more like "A heroin dealer tells the silk road jury what the
prosecutor damned well told him to say"

"Duch also described how the Silk Road’s customer base allowed him to reach
buyers who he believed wouldn’t have otherwise had access to his product. "

ergo, one of their arguments is going to be that SR _created_ a drug market,
and made addicts of innocent children who were looking for my little pony
pictures and got tricked into taking smack.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
> ergo, one of their arguments is going to be that SR created a drug market,
> and made addicts of innocent children who were looking for my little pony
> pictures and got tricked into taking smack.

Doesn't that seem reasonable? Not in the extreme form you've taken at least,
but in a milder form. It seems reasonable to me that a number of people who
otherwise would not try heroin due to lack of access might try it if getting
it becomes convenient enough.

It's naive to assume that just because getting drugs is relatively easy that
making it easier won't increase the number of people who decide to use drugs.
Just as it is wrong for prosecutors to bend reality to fit their
interpretation of the facts, it is wrong of those in favor of drug reform to
bend reality to fit _their_ interpretation. I would love to see more
reasonable drug laws, and I'm probably far more libertarian than most in what
changes I'd like to see, however, I recognize that by improving access to
drugs you probably will also increase the number of people who do drugs, all
else remaining constant.

~~~
madaxe_again
But that's the thing - I don't believe that it _did_ increase access in any
substantive fashion - you can go virtually anywhere on the planet, and find
someone selling the usual suspects. From those who I know who used SR (fully
aware this is apocryphal!), usage actually generally decreased, as rather than
buying large quantities infrequently from a local dealer (less risk), folks
would buy smaller quantities more often, and thus moderate their consumption.

The only things which certainly proliferated more readily as a result of SR
would be RCs (Research Chemicals), which your shady park dealer does not
usually carry.

Either way, I reckon that this argument will be pivotal in their case, and
they will, over the course of the trial, present hockey-stick graphs showing
that SR has turned the entire planet into heroin users.

So - I don't reckon this will have increased the number of people taking
drugs. I would rather think that it may have encouraged people to experiment
more than they otherwise would have due to increased access, but only in the
case of people who are prior users of recreational substances - and as above,
if anything, it reduced consumption in areas where a "street" supply already
existed.

------
duiker101
> By late 2012, he was buying painkillers from the Silk Road, which he says he
> heard about from news media

This is an interesting part for me. "Exposing" it, actually brought more
customers.

------
eps
> _Duch’s heroin shipments from a Monroe, New York post office ... disguised
> with a fake return address._

That bulk mail envelope scanning program sure must've came handy for tracking
the origin of his shipments.

~~~
kissickas
Any idea of how he did get caught? I've searched around briefly but haven't
found anything.

~~~
zqxwce
Same question.

~~~
byEngineer
Police orders it on the Silk Road, then asks USPS where it was shipped from.
Then the cameras at the USPS do the rest.

------
norswap
Trying to sway the jury with emotional impact rather than appeals to reason is
not how it should be done.

~~~
narag
The reason is stablishing two facts: that he wouldn't have sold if not for SR
and that the buyers wouldn't have bought if not for SR. Also in he article
you'll find why: it's a rebuttal to some defense's argument.

I would have asked the witness the source of the $3,500 _before_ he had access
to Silk Road. But it doesn't seem just an arbitrary emotional trick.

------
deciplex
> 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.

~~~
coffeemug
_> 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..._

I don't see how it follows that derisking drug sales necessarily didn't
increase harm. Yes, if you were selling drugs on Silk Road you were less
likely to get into a violent confrontation with a client. Yes, if you were
buying drugs on Silk Road you were less likely to get into a violent
confrontation with the dealer. But the claim here is that Silk Road also
dramatically reduced barriers to entry for both buyers and sellers for very
serious drugs.

Heroin is no joke and no amount of pseudo-libertarian drug legalization
arguments make it any safer. If Silk Road made it available to a dramatically
broader audience that otherwise wouldn't have been able to get it, the harm to
society, on balance, must have been enormous.

 _> 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._

Heroin isn't weed. It destroys lives of its users and certainly harms the
society at large. To say otherwise is preposterous, at best.

~~~
mathetic
I like how you conveniently ignored the parent's comments about cartels.

Also I don't understand the use of "pseudo-libertarian" here? Drug usage is a
personal decision and it's none of state's business. That is the very
definition of libertarianism.

It has nothing to do with Silk Road but since you brought it up, legalising
drug usage is for the greater good. You see the real danger does not originate
from violent confrontations but the circles the the usage drags you in. If it
was legally available, there wouldn't be need for an individual to get
involved for their recreational needs.

On a medical perspective, it is common not to help out a friend having adverse
reactions to a drug used simply because it is incriminating if you call the
hospital and then stay with him/her.

And as if this wasn't enough, people just don't seem to get that the war on
drugs has been lost in every continent. It will just go on and on and on. You
can make it safer, peaceful and prevent it to be a source of revenue for
actual crimes, or just don't give a crap and be irresponsible.

~~~
coffeemug
_> Drug usage is a personal decision and it's none of state's business._

Not unless the drug has been empirically found to have a high probability of
harming the individual _and_ a high probability of spreading through
communities. Then it's very much state's business because it becomes a matter
of social preservation.

 _> I don't understand the use of "pseudo-libertarian"._

"Pseudo-libertarian" is the kind of libertarian that doesn't account of
empirical evidence in their arguments.

~~~
woah
Yea we get it. Drug are bad mmmkay. The fact is that the drug war has done
nothing to reduce their use, and it provides a huge source of revenue for
actual violent criminals.

------
Zangela
>“I saw the relative ease that came with it,” he told the court. “It seemed
like something I could get away with.” < Sell drugs throught Internet, it is
accessable for a lot of people, which makes it an easy way to exchange drugs,
and that might increase the people to do drugs.

