Commentary on Technologies Role in Enabling Access to Illegal Narcotics

Understanding that addiction is a chronic disease with most likely harmful repercussions, one could easily argue that controlling the availability of addictive drugs would be a top priority for any society [1]. However, with the war on drugs raging for decades, and no end in sight, the simple fact is, between legalization and the ease of acquisition of addictive substances, the problem is becoming even worse [2]. Specifically, our focus was on the ease of access. In our recent journal publication, we leveraged various dark web site data to demonstrate the rampant availability of various illegal narcotics online [3]. The article focused on the convenience of purchasing illegal drugs on a global basis and showed that this is likely leading to an increase in addiction and overdoses. Specifically, with the advent of cryptocurrencies over the past ten years or so and their seemingly anonymous nature, one can now more easily conduct drug purchases online in a relatively secure manner [3]. Furthermore, coupled with these anonymized financial transactions, the advent of secure and anonymized websites, often referred to as the dark web sites, has become an even greater enhancer of online drug purchasing [3]. 

In our paper, we note that over the past 10+ years, beginning with Silk Road, the first significant site for buying and selling illegal drugs online via an anonymized service (The Onion Router or TOR as it is known) using cryptocurrency, buyers and sellers can now connect worldwide and essentially have anything they want at their disposal [3]. However, while physical movement of goods is still required, it is clear the buyers and sellers have found ways to ship illegal drugs worldwide. Therefore, we have created a new opportunity wherein users can have an experience similar to any eCommerce site and just like any eCommerce site, they can do everything from grade the quality of the product to rate their experience with the seller. For example, in our paper, we provided a chart wherein several top sellers were openly selling fentanyl and receiving very impressive scores [3]. In fact, one seller had over 1,117 sales in a two-year period and there is no indication of whether or not this individual was ever apprehended or stopped, even when the site was eventually taken down [3,4]. Add into this the numerous reviews many sellers received and it is clear these sellers were shipping worldwide and were effective [3]. 

So, what were the ramifications of all of this? Our data looked at the period covering 2015, 2016, and 2017. During this timeframe, overdose deaths in 2015, 2016, and 2017 were 52404, 65000, and 70000 respectively [3,5]. As we noted in the paper, there were plenty of examples wherein sellers were extremely active. For example, one such individual Frank Matthews, was a seller on AlphaBay and “had made over 5000 sales from 2016-2017. Frank Matthews sales ranged from high quality cocaine to different kinds of ecstasy” [3]. Therefore, with the seemingly continued ability to conduct transactions online and for any amount, it must be assumed that the buyers are both users and distributors. While law enforcement does make attempts to identify sellers and these sites, the simple fact is, the quantity of sellers is significant enough because the demand is global that there likely aren’t enough law enforcement to target everyone. The site called AlphaBay, one of our focus areas for data collection, had been online for at least two years, had 40,000 vendors and “more than 200,000 users” before it was finally taken down by law enforcement [4]. What are the chances every vendor and user was being investigated? In addition, during its time, the site “had transactions exceeding $1 billion in Bitcoin and other digital currencies” [4]. Furthermore, and this is key to all of this, there are known sales from the site linked directly to overdose deaths in the United States [4]. Ultimately, this is only one site, there are/were plenty of sites doing essentially the same thing as shown in our research [3]. From an addiction perspective, when you enable both addicts and distributors the ability to purchase addictive substances from the comfort of their homes, you are inviting disaster. 

In 2021, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that “synthetic opioid-involved death rates increased by over 22% from 2020 to 2021 and accounted for nearly 88% of all opioid-involved deaths in 2021 [3,5]”. It is clear that despite the risks of synthetic opioids, the demand is still there and in fact may be increasing due to its addictive nature. Our research showed that with a global supply chain now in place for illegal narcotics, the simplicity of acquisition is likely to lead to further overdose deaths [3]. In addition, something not discussed is the complexity of investigating, identifying, and prosecuting online drug sales. As noted above, technology has created an anonymization factor wherein law enforcement is still struggling to keep up with. For example, the AlphaBay market noted above went online in 2014 but was not shutdown until 2017 [4]. In addition, because of its global reach, servers were located all over the world which required both identifying and coordinating with various nations, the need to seize said servers [4]. Our research did not even attempt to address the challenge of this. Now, while law enforcement does continue to investigate in order to identify these individuals, the individuals conducting this activity are also learning. For example, peer-to-peer online interaction is not new, think of all of the instant messaging applications currently available. However, with the advent of secured applications running point-to-point encryption, individuals can start to move away from the marketplaces and start working directly with sellers/buyers in a more secure manner. 

Overall, helping individuals overcome addiction is a challenge under normal circumstances. Now, when you add in the capability of technology further enabling worldwide access to the substances causing addiction, we are at a point where we cannot undue the technology and must quickly find a way to slow this down. The dark web has created a world where anything is available to anyone, anywhere. Law Enforcement is attempting to target the sellers and sites but by just scratching the surface, one can see this is a global issue, again, with no end in sight. As was noted in our research, we evaluated a few sellers on a few markets who were conducting more public sales and we able to easily see thousands of legitimate sales of very addictive substances. So, think about the sheer volume of sellers and couple this with peer-to-peer activity which masks an unknown quantity of activity and one can easily see, we are placing thousands and thousands at risk of overdose every single day.

1. NIH (2023) Understanding Drug Use and Addiction DrugFacts. National Institute on Drug Abuse, North Bethesda, USA.
2. Gibson L (2024) We have treatments for opioid addiction that work. So why is the problem getting worse? Vox.
3. Mancini S, Kerry E, Burnstein K, Maynard M (2024) Correlating drug overdoses with dark web market activity. Issues in Information Systems 25: 1-14.
4. FBI (2017) AlphaBay Takedown: Authorities Shutter Online Criminal Market AlphaBay. FBI, Washington, D.C., USA.
5. NIH (2023) Drug Overdose Deaths: Facts and Figures. National Institute on Drug Abuse, North Bethesda, USA.