@Tryptameanie 573568 wrote:
The markets did have some real benefits, like not having to deal with violent lunatics face to face.
I’ve never been a dealer but in my younger days was buying amfet in middle level dealer quantities (to the point the cops thought I was dealing the stuff); and knew a lot of pill dealers back in the early rave days. I have only ever witnessed 3 or 4 incidents of violence; and though I’ve encountered sketchy people none of them I considered a threat (and I am not a big scary dude).
I did hear a few shooting incidents on my radio scanner in the 1990s but that was caused more by certain groups deciding to adopt an aggressive US-inspired gangster culture on the urban music scene than drugs themselves.
Even before this darknet stuff the NCA and Europol were explaining that they weren’t nicking as many dealers as before as the level of violence associated with the drugs trade dipped in the 2000s to the point it no longer triggered alerts.
The amount of violence worldwide has decreased even though more people use recreational drugs than 30 years ago; and the most violent places globally are now those where a culture of militarism/nationalism/religious extremism has developed amongst the middle class young men there in place of such distractions as drugs and music.
