Underground Website Lets You Buy Any Drug Imaginable

• By Adrian Chen, Gawker
• From: http://www.wired.com/

Making small talk with your pot dealer sucks. Buying cocaine can get you shot. What if you could buy and sell drugs online like books or light bulbs? Now you can: Welcome to Silk Road.

About three weeks ago, the U.S. Postal Service delivered an ordinary envelope to Mark’s door. Inside was a tiny plastic bag containing 10 tabs of LSD. “If you had opened it, unless you were looking for it, you wouldn’t have even noticed,” Mark told us in a phone interview.

Mark, a software developer, had ordered the 100 micrograms of acid through a listing on the online marketplace Silk Road. He found a seller with lots of good feedback who seemed to know what they were talking about, added the acid to his digital shopping cart and hit “check out.” He entered his address and paid the seller 50 Bitcoins — untraceable digital currency — worth around $150. Four days later, the drugs (sent from Canada) arrived at his house.

“It kind of felt like I was in the future,” Mark said.


Silk Road, a digital black market that sits just below most internet users’ purview, does resemble something from a cyberpunk novel. Through a combination of anonymity technology and a sophisticated user-feedback system, Silk Road makes buying and selling illegal drugs as easy as buying used electronics — and seemingly as safe. It’s Amazon — if Amazon sold mind-altering chemicals.

Here is just a small selection of the 340 items available for purchase on Silk Road by anyone, right now: a gram of Afghani hash; 1/8 ounce of “sour 13″ weed; 14 grams of ecstasy; .1 gram tar heroin. A listing for “Avatar” LSD includes a picture of blotter paper with big blue faces from the James Cameron movie on it.
The sellers are located all over the world, a large portion from the United States and Canada.



But even Silk Road has limits: You won’t find any weapons-grade plutonium, for example. Its terms of service ban the sale of “anything who’s purpose is to harm or defraud, such as stolen credit cards, assassinations, and weapons of mass destruction.”

‘It’s Amazon — if Amazon sold mild-altering chemicals.’

 

Getting to Silk Road is tricky. The URL seems made to be forgotten. But don’t point your browser there yet. It’s only accessible through the anonymizing network, TOR, which requires a bit of technical skill to configure.
Once you’re there, it’s hard to believe that Silk Road isn’t simply a scam. Such brazenness is usually displayed only by those fake “online pharmacies” that dupe the dumb and flaccid. There’s no sly, Craigslist-style code names here. But while scammers do use the site, most of the listings are legit. Mark’s acid worked as advertised. “It was quite enjoyable, to be honest,” he said. We spoke to one Connecticut engineer who enjoyed sampling some “silver haze” pot purchased off Silk Road. “It was legit,” he said. “It was better than anything I’ve seen.”

Edgarnumbers is selling these 2C-B "blue bees" tablets. Price: 1.15 bitcoins ($10) per tablet.

Silk Road cuts down on scams with a reputation-based trading system familiar to anyone who’s used Amazon or eBay. The user Bloomingcolor appears to be an especially trusted vendor, specializing in psychedelics. One happy customer wrote on his profile: “Excellent quality. Packing, and communication. Arrived exactly as described.” They gave the transaction five points out of five. 

“Our community is amazing,” Silk Road’s anonymous administrator, known on forums as “Silk Road,” told us in an e-mail. “They are generally bright, honest and fair people, very understanding, and willing to cooperate with each other.”

Sellers feel comfortable openly selling hard-core drugs because the real identities of those involved in Silk Road transactions are utterly obscured. If the authorities wanted to ID Silk Road’s users with computer forensics, they’d have nowhere to look. TOR masks a user’s tracks on the site. As for transactions, Silk Road doesn’t accept credit cards, PayPal or any other form of payment that can be traced or blocked. The only money good here is Bitcoins.
Bitcoins have been called a “crypto-currency,” the online equivalent of a brown paper bag of cash. Bitcoins are a peer-to-peer currency, not issued by banks or governments, but created and regulated by a network of other bitcoin holders’ computers. (The name “Bitcoin” is derived from the pioneering file-sharing technology Bittorrent.) They are purportedly untraceable and have been championed by cyberpunks, libertarians and anarchists who dream of a distributed digital economy outside the law, one where money flows across borders as free as bits.
To purchase something on Silk Road, you need first to buy some Bitcoins using a service like Mt. Gox Bitcoin Exchange. Then, create an account on Silk Road, deposit some bitcoins, and start buying drugs. One bitcoin is worth about $8.67, though the exchange rate fluctuates wildly every day. Right now you can buy an 1/8 ounce of pot on Silk Road for 7.63 Bitcoins. That’s probably more than you would pay on the street, but most Silk Road users seem happy to pay a premium for convenience.

‘It kind of felt like I was in the future.’

Since it launched this February, Silk Road has represented the most complete implementation of the Bitcoin vision. Many of its users come from Bitcoin’s Utopian geek community and see Silk Road as more than just a place to buy drugs. Silk Road’s administrator cites the anarcho-libertarian philosophy of Agorism. “The state is the primary source of violence, oppression, theft and all forms of coercion,” Silk Road wrote to us. “Stop funding the state with your tax dollars and direct your productive energies into the black market.”
Mark, the LSD buyer, had similar views. “I’m a libertarian anarchist and I believe that anything that’s not violent should not be criminalized,” he said.

1UP of Canada is offering 1/8 ounce of "the infamous Jack Herer." He writes: "This is just classic stuff, well grown, well cured, well smoked." Price: 7.42 bitcoins ($64)

But not all Bitcoin enthusiasts embrace Silk Road. Some think the association with drugs will tarnish the young technology, or might draw the attention of federal authorities. “The real story with Silk Road is the quantity of people anxious to escape a centralized currency and trade,” a longtime bitcoin user named Maiya told us in a chat. “Some of us view Bitcoin as a real currency, not drug barter tokens.” 

 

Silk Road and Bitcoins could herald a black market eCommerce revolution. But anonymity cuts both ways. How long until a DEA agent sets up a fake Silk Road account and starts sending SWAT teams instead of LSD to the addresses she gets? As Silk Road inevitably spills out of the bitcoin bubble, its drug-swapping utopians will meet a harsh reality no anonymizing network can blur.

Alice in Wonderland Demonstrates Various Drug Use

Published by Paul Tassi
From http://unrealitymag.com/

So you all remember last week when I brought you a series of GIFs demonstrating various mental disorders via Winnie the Pooh characters. That was from artist Matthew Wilkinson (warning graphic content on site), and he’s actually done another series that I think is even better.
Everyone has always thought of Alice in Wonderland as some sort of allegory for a super ridiculous drug trip, but these GIFs demonstrate just how many substances are actually covered in the story. Granted, some weren’t even invented when the story was written, but it’s hard to unsee all of these once you realize they’re there.
Check out the full GIF gallery below, and Matthew, I look forward to seeing what your next project like this will be.

Drug experts say alcohol worse than crack or heroin

Reuters – A bartender carries glasses at a booth during the 'Vinexpo Asia-Pacific 2006' in Hong Kong May …

By Kate Kelland Kate Kelland

From: http://news.yahoo.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – Alcohol is a more dangerous drug than both crack and heroin when the combined harms to the user and to others are assessed, British scientists said Monday.

Presenting a new scale of drug harm that rates the damage to users themselves and to wider society, the scientists rated alcohol the most harmful overall and almost three times as harmful as cocaine or tobacco.

According to the scale, devised by a group of scientists including Britain's Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD) and an expert adviser to the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), heroin and crack cocaine rank as the second and third most harmful drugs.

Ecstasy is only an eighth as harmful as alcohol, according to the scientists' analysis.

Professor David Nutt, chairman of the ISCD, whose work was published in the Lancet medical journal, said the findings showed that "aggressively targeting alcohol harms is a valid and necessary public health strategy."

He said they also showed that current drug classification systems had little relation to the evidence of harm.

Alcohol and tobacco are legal for adults in Britain and many other countries, while drugs such as ecstasy and cannabis and LSD are often illegal and carry the threat of prison sentences.

"It is intriguing to note that the two legal drugs assessed -- alcohol and tobacco -- score in the upper segment of the ranking scale, indicating that legal drugs cause at least as much harm as do illegal substances," Nutt, who was formerly head of the influential British Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), said in a statement about the study.

Nutt was forced to quit the ACMD a year ago after publicly criticizing ministers for ignoring scientific advice suggesting cannabis was less harmful than alcohol.

The World Health Organization estimates that risks linked to alcohol cause 2.5 million deaths a year from heart and liver disease, road accidents, suicides and cancer -- accounting for 3.8 percent of all deaths. It is the third leading risk factor for premature death and disabilities worldwide.

In an effort to offer a guide to policy makers in health, policing, and social care, Nutt's team rated drugs using a technique called multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) which assessed damage according to nine criteria on harm to the user and seven criteria on harm to others.

Harms to the user included things such as drug-specific or drug-related death, damage to health, drug dependence and loss of relationships, while harms to others included crime, environmental damage, family conflict, international damage, economic cost, and damage to community cohesion.

Drugs were then scored out of 100, with 100 given to the most harmful drug and zero indicating no harm at all.

The scientists found alcohol was most harmful, with a score of 72, followed by heroin with 55 and crack with 54.

Among some of the other drugs assessed were crystal meth (33), cocaine (27), tobacco (26), amphetamine or speed (23), cannabis (20), benzodiazepines, such as Valium (15), ketamine (15), methadone (14), mephedrone (13), ecstasy (9), anabolic steroids (9), LSD (7) and magic mushrooms (5).

(Editing by Alison Williams)

Chandler Woman Renting Out Retired Drug Dog to Patrol Teens' Bedrooms

By James King
From http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/

www.tf.com

Attention Valley teens: Just when you thought your weed stash was safely hidden from your parents, get ready to say "fuuuuucccck!"

A Chandler woman has started a business called Desert Drug Dog, where she rents out her retired, drug-sniffing dog to parents who suspect their teens of using drugs.

Amy Halm and her dog, Dargo, will come to your house and flip it for drugs like it's a mini-van at a border-patrol checkpoint. She'll even do it when the kids are at school so they'll never know how you found their stash.

Amy Halm Dargo hard at work

​Dargo used to work for a police department in Indiana but has since retired and come to live with Halm in her Chandler home.

Halm tells New Times that Dargo had to leave his job as a working drug dog because, while he was great at sniffing out dope, he would often freak out if -- while he was searching for drugs -- a loud vehicle sped by.

Dargo's specialties are cocaine, marijuana, crystal meth, and just about any other mind-altering substance your kids probably don't want you to find.

Halm's operation is fairly unobtrusive to parents -- Dargo doesn't scratch or dig when he finds something, just indicates that it's there, at which point Halm will come and put a sticky note where the dog suspects drugs to be hidden. Parents can handle what they find as they see fit.

Halm isn't limiting Dargo's work to suspect teens, though, Dargo's services can be used in businesses and schools, too.

For more information on Desert Drug Dog, click here.

The Most Memorable Fictional Drugs in Movies and Television

Published by Madison

From: http://unrealitymag.com

Whether it’s Tony Montana snorting lines of coke the length of pool tables, Cheech and Chong puffing on some quality bud, Harry Goldfarb injecting himself with smack, or crack smoking on The Wire, mind-altering and recreational drugs have been a major part of movies and television for a long time.  But there are also a gangload of fictional drugs to consider, when the stuff that already exists isn’t potent enough.
Some fictional drugs can be simply a great time, while others grant the user incredible perspective or abilities.  One thing’s for sure, they are all a lot more powerful than the dime bag you bought from the creepy guy on the corner.  Anyway, there are quite a few that stick out, so take a look at the most memorable fictional drugs in movies and television.

Neuroin - Minority Report

John Anderton has a bit of neuroin habit, and he likes to take a puff of the stuff before watching old home videos of his son.  But Anderton’s habit is pretty mild compared to that of many others, including the addict parents of the precogs that help to make up PreCrime.  Neuroin can be taken using an inhaler - like the one shown above - which is exactly how Anderton takes it when he wants to go from melancholy to euphoric.  Essentially, it’s like a gaseous heroin.

Nuke - Robocop 2

Inside that device that looks like something you’d stick a check in while at a drive-thru bank is nuke, a red liquid that drug that is administered via an injection directly into the bloodstream.  It’s highly addictive and causes effects that I guess are closest to that of cocaine, which makes it so popular on the future streets of Detroit.  Nuke effects everyone, from cyborg cops to 12-year-old drug dealers.  Most people take nuke through a quick injection into the neck.  Hardcore.

Moloko Plus - A Clockwork Orange

Before Alex and his droogs go out on the town for lashings of the old ultraviolence, they like to sharpen themselves up at the Korova Milk Bar by drinking Moloko Plus - milk laced with vellocet, synthemesc, or drencrom.  The different drugs placed in the milk obviously have different effects, but Alex seems to prefer drencrom.  The movie doesn’t really go too much into the Moloko Plus outside of Alex’s narration, but the passages in the book describe just how messed up Alex and his droogs get.  And yeah, it’s pretty insane.

Quietus - Children of Men

Quietus isn’t a recreational drug, but it certainly is used by those looking for an escape.  In a time when women are unable to reproduce, many people would rather die quickly, painlessly, and with dignity instead of watching the world around them tear itself apart as our very civilization crumbles.  The British government understands these concerns, thus the availability of Quietus, the most effectively-marketed suicide pill ever.  (Like there are suicide pills that failed due to poor marketing)

Prozium - Equilibrium

The effects of Prozium cause human emotions to come to a screeching halt.  Prozium was created in the hopes of avoiding World War IV; if nobody had any strong emotions, then it follows that nations wouldn’t go to war.  The drug is administered via an injection into the jugular, and all citizens of Libria are required to take Prozium.  Just missing one shceduled injection, however, can result in the resurfacing of emotions, as John Preston discovered himself.

Liquid Karma - Southland Tales

Liquid Karma is the name of the new, revolutionary fuel source in Southland Tales, but it’s also used as a drug, especially by soldiers fighting in World War III.  “Blood Red” is the most potent type of Liquid Karma one can buy, and users may experience telepathy and a deeper, epiphany-like connection with God.  As Southland Tales is about the end of the world and is really a metaphor for the Book of Revelation, you have to wonder if Richard Kelly intended for Abilene to use Liquid Karma as an allusion to the theory that John wrote the Book of Revelation while high on shrooms.  In any event, drugs - even fictional ones - don’t get much harder than Liquid Karma.

V - True Blood

“V” is really just slang for vampire blood, one of the most life-changing substances one can put into his or her body.  The effects of V not only make you an animal in bed, but will also heighten your senses and make you as one with the universe.  In fact, doing V with a partner is even better than sex.  Literally.  Not surprisingly, if these drugs were real, I’d have to pick V as my drug of choice.

Ephemerol - Scanners

Ephemerol was intended to be used as a tranquilizer and a morning sickness remedy, as well as having the effect of suppressing telepathic and telekinetic abilities in adults.  But oh, there’s just one slight problem - ephemerol actually causes telepathic and telekinetic abilities in the children of those who take it.  And that’s how we get exploding heads.

Substance D - A Scanner Darkly

There are two types of people: those who are addicted to Substance D, and those who haven’t tried it yet.   This psychoactive substance - whose “D” stands for “death” - eventually severs the connection between the right and left hemispheres of the user’s brain, resulting in two totally different personalities, with each personality being unaware of the other.  So yeah, it messes you up pretty bad.

Spice Melange - Dune

The Spice Melange is perhaps the most powerful drug on this list.  Found only on the planet Arrakis, where it is produced by giant sandworms, Melange grants the user longer life, increased vitality, and in some people, precognition.  Even better, Melange can be used by navigators to plot courses through space-time, turning what once seemed like impossible intergalactic voyages into routine trips.  Knowing all that, it makes sense why Melange is considered the most valuable substance in the universe.  As for side effects?  Your eyes turn blue - I think that’s better than having to go to a methadone clinic - but prolonged use may eventually turn you into a huge slug-like creature.

Valkyr - Max Payne

This green liquid drug is prevalent in New York City and can give its user increased speed and strength.  The downside?  Nightmarish hallucinations, incoherent babbling, and complete disassociation with the real world.  Some people can tolerate the drug, but most just go insane.

U4EA - Beverly Hills, 90210

U4EA has got to be a euphemism for ecstasy, so of course the kids out in Beverly Hills are going to be all over it. If someone is gonna slip something in your drink, it could be a hell of a lot worse than U4EA.
I’m sure there are a lot more fictional drugs that I haven’t listed, but these were the ones that really stuck out to me the most. If you know of any good ones I’ve left off, let me know in the comment sections. And remember to just say no…

Synthetic Alcohol Gives Drinkers a Buzz Minus the Hangover, Addiction

By Clay Dillow

From: http://www.popsci.com/

Prost! senator86

 

Still feeling the sting of New Year's Eve all these days later? A synthetic alcohol substitute developed from chemicals similar in composition to Valium could give users the pleasant feelings of tipsiness without affecting the parts of the brain that lead to barroom brawls, crippling addiction, and sleeping in your car.
Unlike all those bunk point-of-sale hangover remedies, this headache-eluding synthetic is being developed by some serious brainpower at Imperial College London. Professor David Nutt, one of Britain's top drug experts, was recently relieved of his position as a government advisor for comments about cannabis and MDMA. Now, he's trying to change the way Britons think, and feel, about getting drunk.

By harnessing benzodiazepines like diazepam, the chief ingredient in anti-anxiety med Valium, Nutt sees a future of drinking without becoming addicted, belligerent or -- and here's the kicker -- intoxicated. Using one of thousands of possible benzos, researchers are working to tailor a colorless, tasteless synthetic that could eventually replace the alcohol content in beer, wine and liquor. Drinkers could toss back as many glasses of the swill as they want but would remain only mildly drunk from first drink to last, keeping good-timers within legal limits whether they like it or not. If one did find the buzz too intense for a particular task -- say, driving home after a long night at the pub -- those warm feelings of inebriation could be instantly turned off with a simple antidote pill that mutes the synthetic's effects on brain receptors.
The skeptics (and delinquents) among us wonder exactly why Nutt and company think that people who enjoy getting roaring drunk would voluntarily switch to a tipple that lacks the knock-down power of authentic alcohol, but as a matter of public health it's not such a far-fetched idea. After all, alcohol has been both a bringer of good cheer and destroyer of lives for thousands of years now, and a 21st-century update to an ancient favorite could be in order. In the meantime, we're sticking with scotch.
[Telegraph]

Dutch man reports theft of Ecstasy pill collection

AP -

A man who said he spent two decades collecting Ecstasy pills of all colors and shapes as a hobby has turned to police for help after they were stolen -- because he said some of them are poisonous.

Police say the 46-year-old man, who was not identified, decided to report the theft despite the illegal nature of the collection because he was worried about the possible consequences if anybody were to swallow one of the poisoned pills.

It was not immediately clear why about 40 red-and-white pills out of the 2,400-pill-strong collection would be poisoned, but the police said they fear the drugs could be lethal if swallowed.

"That's really the main reason he came to the police," said police spokeswoman Esther Naber, adding the man "knows he's not going to get his collection back."

A report in De Volkskrant daily Thursday said the man claimed he was not a drug dealer or user.

"I've tried it before but didn't like it," the report quoted him saying. "My passion for collecting comes from the varied collection of colors, shapes and logos that are printed on the pills."

According to a police statement, the man gathered the pills over a 20 year period and carefully stored them in coin collecting folders.

The folders were allegedly taken during a break-in Wednesday at the man's home in Eerbeek, 56 miles (90 kilometers) east of Amsterdam.

Police spokesman Naber said investigators tended to believe the man's story.

"Why would you make something like this up?" she said.

Prosecutors and drug enforcement officials are still weighing whether to charge him with a crime.

"Given that the pills have disappeared, for the moment there's no evidence to support a possession charge," Naber said.

The pills' street value is estimated at euro11,000 ($16,200).

Licorice ingredient an antidote for cocaine toxicity?

An ingredient in licorice shows promise as an antidote for the toxic effects of cocaine abuse, including deadly overdoses of the highly addictive drug, researchers in Korea and Pennsylvania are reporting. Their study is in the Jan. 2 issue of ACS’ Journal of Proteome Research.

In the new study, Meeyul Hwang, Chae Ha Yang, and colleagues note that there is currently no effective medicine for treating cocaine abuse or addiction. Recent animal studies conducted by the researchers show that a licorice ingredient called isoliquiritigenin (ISL) can block the nervous system’s production of dopamine. That neurotransmitter is involved in emotion, movement, and other brain activities.

Cocaine and other addictive drugs stimulate dopamine and help produce the pleasurable and addictive effects. Drugs that block dopamine block this response. The scientists used rats as model animals to show that rats injected with ISL just prior to cocaine-administration showed 50 percent less of the behavioral effects associated with the illicit drug. They also showed that ISL injections protected nerve cells in the brain from cocaine-associated damage.

More information: Proteome Research, “Proteomic and Behavioral Analysis of Response to Isoliquiritigenin in Brains of Acute Cocaine Treated Rats”

Provided by ACS