@Digital Buddha 573014 wrote:
maybe people can take the lessons from the darknet and start getting a smarter ground game going to distribute drugs on a scale large enough to illustrate that prohibition is bullshit.
that was the exact situation in Europe during the late 1990s (especially as at one point we all had GSM phones, modern desktop and portable computers, access to encrypt if needed (though it often was more trouble than it was worth) whilst the Police still had analogue radios (that you could listen in to and were also plagued by intererence) and dumb terminals to 1970s mainframes.
Unfortunately people ignored valid harm reduction advice; whilst MDMA / stimulants and other party drugs are very rarely fatal in OD their excessive use does cause long term problems to both users and societies (one of the worst is bad crashes caused by DUI); but it has had a lasting effect inasmuch that you have to be shifting thousands of £ / € worth of drugs and making it your main income source as well as being mixed up with violence to end up doing any large amount of jail time; the bulk of users and even some low level dealers until recently would just get a formal Caution (these are now being abolished but the new penalty appears to be just a formal requirement to attend rehab).
Although the British NCA is heavily involved in these operations; their head officer openly said to the media that they can no longer stop the use of drugs in Britain He described their rôle as a brute force regulator that limits the total amount that can be consumed every month and/or concentrates resources on those dealers who may also be involved in the traffic of stolen goods, prohibited weapons and kinderporno etc.
However I don’t think a lot of these darknet lot really are the kind of socially aware enlightened drug user found on a site like this; they are more like a clique of young American males who enjoy having money, resources and power over others (for instance the ones who got nicked don’t even seem to be that interested in drugs or partying. and were mostly hoarding the bitcoins). Also the correct and secure use of the software requires a reasonable level of computer knowledge and attention to detail; unortunately the last one conflicts with the modern party drugs culture of instant gratification.
