The internet has better drugs — at least, that’s the popular belief. Surveys including the Global Drug Survey have found that users believe drugs sold online are higher quality — meaning they have a higher purity level of the substance they are advertised to be. New research out of the Netherlands, however, suggests it would be foolish to trust that buying drugs online is safer, quality-wise, than buying offline.
“The perception of better product quality is a main trigger for customers to purchase substances online, yet there is little evidence to support this assumption,” write the authors of a new study from the Trimbos Institute at the Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction. “This undue trust in online markets is potentially harmful because customers are often unaware of the presence of unexpected or unknown substances or harmful adulterants in drug products obtained online, which may increase the risk of adverse drug events.”
The new study looked at 32,663 drug samples, 928 of which were bought online through dark web marketplaces, Google-indexed marketplaces, and other online means. These samples were chemically analyzed for purity. The researchers found that drugs purchased online were about as pure as drugs bought on the street — except for MDMA, which was significantly purer on the street.
The study also found that online prices are typically higher than street prices, and that the proportion of drugs bought online nearly tripled from 2013 to 2015. “In contrast to the small purity differences found, online prices for various drugs were 10 to 23 percent higher, despite the prevailing perception of better values online,” the authors wrote.
The analysis was limited to the Netherlands, which is a major producer of ecstasy and amphetamine. That may also contribute to the high quality of drugs there, the authors noted.
The analysis might also have been different if limited to drugs purchased on dark web markets, or cryptomarkets, which are accessible only through the anonymizing network Tor. There is stronger evidence to support the idea that dark web drugs are higher quality. The FBI found high quality in line with what was advertised when it examined listings on Silk Road. One study published earlier this year analyzed 219 samples and found “most samples were of high purity.”
Drug use is generally safer when users know what they’re getting
This might be because customers on the dark web are more discerning due to the market’s higher barrier to entry. Dark web markets are also clustered in communities that tend to self-police. Earlier this year, one marketplace banned the drug fentanyl, a powerful opioid driving an addiction epidemic in North America, after a wave of deaths. The Netherlands survey found that only 15 percent of the drugs reportedly bought online were from the dark web, however.
There are two possible lessons for internet drug-buyers here. First, there is more evidence that dark web markets sell higher-quality drugs than the rest of the web. But more importantly, the data on drug purity is largely based on self-reports and a scattered sample collection. Drug use is generally safer when users know what they’re getting — when something advertised as heroin is actually mostly heroin, without too many other drugs and mixers cut in (safety in the context of a physical drug transaction is another consideration that is not addressed here).
While there is a general perception that drugs sold online are purer, there is no consensus on evidence to support that belief. In light of that, and the clear and present danger from fentanyl and MDMA, for which higher purity isn’t necessarily a good thing, users shouldn’t feel that the drugs they buy online are any safer.
