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German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

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Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#171

Post by that_guy_iain »

brazzy wrote: post #125
that_guy_iain wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience talking to the people whose job it is to provide support and services to those who abuse substances. Most experts in substance abuse normally say Alcohol is the worst of all the substances. With many stating, it causes more havoc in families on scale than heroin. More people die because of Alcohol, not just from drinking it but from drink drivers, drunken fights, etc. The general violence caused by…

But note that all those statement are about the amount of harm in an environment where alcohol is legal, cheaply available in every supermarket, widely advertized, and its consumption socially accepted, even expected . Can you really say in good conscience that other drugs wouldn't be worse if they became equally ubiquitous?

For the most part, yes. Lots of the harm comes from the fact they're not legal and cheaply available. For example, heroin, I would say nearly all the harm comes from the fact it's not legal. Overdoses are prevented because they can happen in safe places where people will notice. I've even been told of a story where people thought someone was having an overdose and they were told to go home because they couldn't risk calling an ambulance, I was told this story by one of the people telling the person to go home, so I believe it. The crime that comes from heroin comes from people trying to make money to buy heroin. Considering tobacco is more addictive, and we have way less crime to buy tobacco, it seems logical to assume crime would drop if drug addicts didn't have to spend 20-30 a day on drugs. Then you have the violence and anti-social behaviour which for most drugs is non-existent.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#172

Post by Broken_Hippo »

88840-8855 wrote: post #120
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the same logic. Weed isn't a contagious disease responsible for probably the majority of last year's deaths, and if you overdose on heroin, your neighbours' grandparents won't also die of a heroin overdose. There are plenty of problems with drugs, but that ain't one. Now, banning smoking in public, that I can get behind. I don't want none of that nasty second-hand smoke.

Well, directly there are no negative implications, but indirectly very many. I do not want to finance health insurance for drug addicts, for example. And yes, I agree, also smoking should be banned and the health insurance limited. Sorry, but not sorry for having a conservative stand. You _must_ accept my opinion instead of downvoting... I thought that Pluralism of Opinions is a valued concept in democracies...

You already help to finance things for drug addicts, though - and provide similar things for people that aren't actually addicts but sent to treatment because they got caught with drugs. Or worse, you are paying for jail and punishment for folks that decided they wanted to do LSD twice a year. Or get high on the weekends.

Also, I do not have to accept your opinion. Not every opinion is valid nor should every opinion be considered. For example, I can ignore anti-vaccine sentiments, white nationalism, and serious flat earth bs without investigating further.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#173

Post by dkroy »

krageon wrote: post #162
brazzy wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But note that all those statement are about the amount of harm in an environment where alcohol is legal, cheaply available in every supermarket, widely advertized, and its consumption socially accepted, even expected . Can you really say in good conscience that other drugs wouldn't be worse if they became equally ubiquitous?

Less criminalisation inevitably means less drug harm. Any other stance can only be made in bad faith. Just look at relative harm numbers, the stats (especially at something like the EU level) are available publicly.

Also, we currently have a real life case study to learn from in Portugal though I haven't been staying up to date with the latest results on that approach with resulted in more decriminalization of drugs across the board.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#174

Post by draugadrotten »

bluescrn wrote: post #147
transpostmeta wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My solution: Increase taxes on all alcoholic beverages. Make pharmacies able to sell 20% by volume alcohol mixed with water that is drinkable in non-branded, medical-looking bottles. Addicts with little money can buy that and mix it with fruit juice or whatever, and everyone else buys the expensive real stuff.

Alcohol is big business, though. Forcing pricess too high would be the end of most pubs/bars and many restaurants. And we're losing many of them already due to Covid. If taxes were really high, I suspect that home brewing would be become far more popular, too.

What's too high? Alcohol is heavily taxed in the nordic countries with a single beer costing 10-20 dollars in a bar. A single long-drink can be 20-40 dollars. There are still plenty of bars and people getting drunk. Yes, there is home brewing but it's not what the young kids do to have fun and get drunk.

You can read about the taxation and the effects of a tax cut in this paper from 2018, https://www.alko.fi/INTERSHOP/static/WFS/Alko-OnlineShop-Sit...

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#175

Post by brazzy »

hummusman wrote: post #153
brazzy wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But note that all those statement are about the amount of harm in an environment where alcohol is legal, cheaply available in every supermarket, widely advertized, and its consumption socially accepted, even expected . Can you really say in good conscience that other drugs wouldn't be worse if they became equally ubiquitous?

I think the crux here is that decriminalising/legalising the use of drugs such as heroin would not make them more widespread and ubiquitous. Despite being illegal they are still so very easy to access in almost all countries, and most people are well aware of the high risks associated with them. Legalising them would bring users/abusers into a more public sphere where it is far easier to access harm reduction and the…

> I think the crux here is that decriminalising/legalising the use of drugs such as heroin would not make them more widespread and ubiquitous.

That is a very ridiculously wrong statement.

> Despite being illegal they are still so very easy to access in almost all countries

You apparently have a pretty wide definition of "Very easy". I wouldn't have the faintest clue how to lay my hands on some heroin. Yes, I might start asking around in the vicinity of nightclubs based on hearsay that party drugs are supposedly sold there and the dealers might know someone who sells heroin. That would require navigating some scary situations quite outside my comfort zone. That's a completely different level of availability than alcohol, of which there are shelves full in every supermarket and ads plastered all over telling me how it will make me hip and attractive.

> Legalising them would bring users/abusers into a more public sphere where it is far easier to access harm reduction and the state can provide it without legal complications

You don't need legalization for that, merely decriminalization of use and possession.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#176

Post by pbronez »

dkroy wrote: post #173
krageon wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less criminalisation inevitably means less drug harm. Any other stance can only be made in bad faith. Just look at relative harm numbers, the stats (especially at something like the EU level) are available publicly.

Also, we currently have a real life case study to learn from in Portugal though I haven't been staying up to date with the latest results on that approach with resulted in more decriminalization of drugs across the board.

I’d be very interested to see a report on how that’s going

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#177

Post by system33- »

thinkingemote wrote: post #93

Anyone suspect this weeks major disruption to the tor network was related to this? 4 days ago: "All v3 Onion addresses unavailable": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25714424 This article says that police called their operation "Operation DisrupTor" in 2019.... edits: https://matt.traudt.xyz/posts/tracking-tors-network-wide-v3-... suggests that it wasnt an attack although was written before the news.

The "attacker" is so bad at consistently preventing consensus generation that I find it extremely hard to believe it is an attack at all, thus it isn't related to this market bust.

An attacker would (1) send much more traffic to dirauths or find an easier/better way to disrupt the dirauths' voting, and (2) ignore the fallback dirs.

(Author of the matt.traudt.xyz post)

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#178

Post by oji0hub »

JimBlackwood wrote: post #165
martin_a wrote: post #70

"the largest market" always reminds me of "Bin Ladens right hand". Obviously the next one becomes the largest, but nevertheless it's like they kill at least one of those markets a month. Probably legalizing weed would stop most of that more effectively than all those police operations after month of preparation.

Afaik, weed is a small part of the market. Agree on the legalisation though. In the Netherlands at least, I find it hard to name more than a few individuals in my social group (university students from a range of studies) that aren’t recreational users of XTC/psychedelics. Having visited festivals and clubs in other European countries, I think the situation is not much different there. It seems a bit pointless to kee…

Even the police stopping me every time at the border probably wake up with a cup of coffee, get a beer on Friday and maybe smoke a cigarette.

We won't stop drugs because people don't want to.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#179

Post by oji0hub »

zaarn wrote: post #137
cm2187 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though if the seller is the police, the buyer is exposed.

Not really, the buyer can just claim they didn't know who ordered the package or what was in it. It's not a crime to pick up your mail.

You can. And the court can ignore that, which they routinely do, and convict you anyway.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#180

Post by brazzy »

dkroy wrote: post #173
krageon wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less criminalisation inevitably means less drug harm. Any other stance can only be made in bad faith. Just look at relative harm numbers, the stats (especially at something like the EU level) are available publicly.

Also, we currently have a real life case study to learn from in Portugal though I haven't been staying up to date with the latest results on that approach with resulted in more decriminalization of drugs across the board.

Portugal has not, in fact, fully decriminalized any previously illegal drug. Not even cannabis.
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