Buying drugs online: ‘It’s so easy. It sucks you in’

“I would have started out by buying a lot of cannabis seed and spice, which is synthetic marijuana, in the head shops. Once they closed, it was hard to get it. So I started ordering it online and having it delivered to my house.”

Michael was a regular buyer of drugs online for many years . He had “a good job in the tech industry”, and if he had been caught he would have had “a lot to lose”.

“It’s just so easy to get, it sucks you in. You had that false sense – you’d think what harm am I doing? I’ve bought from street dealers too, but I always felt the internet was a hundred times safer – you’re not meeting some dirty person on a corner and putting yourself at risk.

“The other thing I started using was snow blow – synthetic cocaine. You’d hear about new things in chatrooms or on Facebook. You can get anything shipped to your house. It’s very handy.”

The so-called “dark web” – that corner of the internet where most of the illicit activity in cyber-space happens – is providing ready and relatively “risk-free” access to drugs for a demographic that defies the stereotype of the Irish drug addict. They are tech-literate, middle-class, able to access credit cards and often have an interest in physical fitness.

Middle-class market

Hannah McHugh of Uisce, a community initiative set up to ensure that people who use drugs have a voice in decisions that impact their lives, says “people who use drugs tell us that online drugs are a middle-class market for people who are tech savvy and have resources available”.

“In our experience people who are living with addiction, specifically people who are homeless, rarely have access to the requirements needed to purchase online currency or the technology to buy drugs online.”

Tim Bingham, a researcher based in Ireland who has published peer-reviewed research on the online drugs market, says the appeal to buyers is twofold. “It’s the quality – anyone with a rating of lower than 97 or 98 per cent won’t stay in business – and it’s the relative anonymity, because you’re using a browser and buying with encrypted currency.”

There’s no single type of darknet customer: they range from bodybuilders – who procure anabolic steroids, fat-burning drugs and, as a consequence of their steroid use, erectile dysfunction drugs – to professionals accessing “nootropics” or so-called cognitive enhancing drugs, to people who buy stimulants and ecstasy for fun, or cannabis to unwind.

The 2015 National Student Drug Survey found that 82 per cent of students had tried illegal drugs – 18 per cent bought them on the internet and 4.5 per cent “usually” got them on the darknet.

Cheaper

“You have a whole cohort of drug-users out there who you wouldn’t see as your stereotypical users,” says Bingham. “In my research I found that people with mental health issues who wanted to access their medication and didn’t want to go to their psychologist would buy it online. There are people buying their hep C drugs from India online because it’s a lot cheaper.”

Bingham says the element of self-policing on darknet sites means there is a belief that the drugs available are often of higher quality.

When it comes to prescription drugs, however, pharmacist Ann Marie Horan points out that “you really don’t know what you’re getting”.

“There could be rat poison, floor polish, talcum powder in it. The photograph may have no relation to the product that gets sent to you. At best you could be wasting your money; at worst you could be taking a dose of a drug that is incorrect.”

Even websites operating on the regular internet, or “surface web”, may be selling counterfeit products, the Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA) warns. “Just because a website states that it is authorised to sell medicines or looks professional, does not mean that it is legitimate.”

According to the research organisation Rand Europe, there were around 50 so-called cryptomarkets where anonymous sellers and buyers trade illegal drugs, psychoactive substances and prescription drugs operating on the darknet in 2016.

In January of last year these sites generated a total monthly revenue of between €12 million and €22 million, excluding prescription drugs. Cannabis, stimulants and ecstasy are responsible for 70 per cent of all revenues.

Between 2 per cent and 6 per cent of the deals accounted for over a quarter of all revenue over a three-year period.

Targeted enforcement, usually focused on suppliers rather than people buying for their own use, can work to combat the trade -- the “ongoing inter-agency approach” to combatting the illegal supply of sedatives was partly responsible for an overall reduction in the number of illegal drug units seized in Ireland between 2016 and 2015, from 1.1 million units to just under 675,000, the HPRA says.

But the slowdown in the trade in sedatives coincided with significant growth in the trade in the trade in steroids on both the surface and the dark web. Between 2015 and 2016, the number of anabolic steroids seized increased from under 40,000 to over 100,000 units.

The side effects of the misuse of steroids can include, according to the HPRA, “blood clots, high blood pressure, headaches, depression, irritability, mood swings, personality changes, insomnia, irregularities of the reproductive system in males and females, stomach pain [and] stunting of growth” in children.

Mark Kennedy, head of residential and counselling services at the Merchant’s Quay project, says “steroid users would now account for around 350 individuals accessing our services”.

“They’re not the traditional demographic of drug users – they’d often be in employment, in accommodation, and come from middle-class backgrounds. Often someone in the gym might recommend something to help with their training, but the level of information is very poor. They’ll come in and say ‘I’m not doing any training, I’m just injecting steroids’.”

Bingham believes we are missing an opportunity to engage directly with people on the channels where they’re buying drugs. In April he will deliver a presentation to the College of Psychiatrists on how health professionals could use the darknet to interact with users – particularly those who may not be accessing more traditional drug services.

“We’re definitely missing a piece where we should be engaging with people online and on the darknet,” he says.

As for Michael, he no longer buys drugs online.

“Nearly 15 years ago, when I was 27 or 28, I first tried heroin – it was just another new thing. I was in a great job at the time, but the place closed down in my town, and moved off to another site and I got a lump sum. That’s when the heroin took over.

“I’ve been clean since November, and things are going okay. I have two kids – including a son who’s 12. I would worry about him. I monitor all his internet stuff. I’ll look at everything. It’s just way too easy now.”

First venture

I decide to find out just how easy. My first venture into the dark web begins, as all internet searches do, on Google.

I download a browser that enables anonymous communication on the internet, then a virtual private network, which acts as an additional security measure, and take out a subscription for €10 for one month.

I am quickly guided to a cyber souk that sells everything from weapons to fake Rolexes to “social engineering scams”. But its most thriving categories are in porn and drugs.

The first thing I see is a listing for fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 100 times more powerful than morphine and responsible for the death of Prince.

The listings are organised by category, and you can refine your search by filters including auction or fixed-priced listings.

Getting onto the darknet is shockingly easy – and navigating it is even easier. In less than 30 minutes I have graduated from someone whose most radical internet purchase was teeth whitening strips to someone searching for listings for benzodiazepines, ketamines and cocaine.