The UK’s National Crime Agency has announced that several major drug suppliers on the dark web have decided to voluntarily ban the sale of the deadly drug fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, due to the danger it poses. The sellers decided to pull the product off their dark websites as it could cause fatalities which they believe would cause them to receive more attention from the police.
Discussing the removal of the item, Vince O’Brien from the NCA, said:
“If they’ve got people selling very high-risk commodities then it’s going to increase the risk to them. There are marketplaces that will not accept listings for weapons and explosives – those are the ones that will not accept listings for fentanyl. Clearly, law enforcement would prioritise the supply of weapons, explosives and fentanyl over, for example, class C drugs – and that might well be why they do this.
There are also drug users on the dark web who say on forums that they don’t think it’s right that people are selling fentanyl because it is dangerous and kills a lot of people.”
Despite some stores pulling it from their product listings, there’s a good chance that it’s still available on other stores due to the nature of the dark web.
Most of the fentanyl sold online is sourced from China according to the NCA, and in the UK there have been several successes in terms of catching sellers after working closely with law enforcement around the world. Earlier this year, Kyle Enos, from Newport, Wales, was sentenced to eight years in jail. Of his 160 clients that police were able to trace, four of them had already died but it’s not certain whether they"d taken the batch Enos sent out.
For those interested in the dark web and hold it up as some sort of bastion for anonymity, this news should come as a warning that in fact, law enforcement can track you down, even if you’re behind layers of security.
Source: The Guardian