Cryptomarkets Are One Place Where Drug Risk Is Dissected and Reworked
I should also mention that once the local tar I was getting no longer available to me I resorted to the shitty stuff at a new location and thats when I first tried mainlining it. Agora
I snorted oxys for a few yrs until the oxy formula was changed in 2010, then switched to H for over a year. The bulk of my opiate use was approx $80/day habit. Trying to get clean, I took subs for a few mos but was unable to get off. To get clean, I took Iboga / Ibogaine and that immediately repaired my opiate receptors and got me off a 4 year opiate habit overnight without any WD. I have been clean ever since ‐ ‐ 3.5 yrs!! (feel free to ask questions about Iboga. it is an incredible plant and cures opioid addiction overnight… youtube it!).
Risk is meaningful, symbolic behaviour. Risk is part of human interaction and the risk behaviour online should be understood as meaningful, communicative and identity forming just as much as any other aspect of life (Rhodes 1997). People are exposed to risks that are inherently unmanageable and unknowable. There is a contradiction here. All kinds of behaviour become quantified, informationalised, mined, performed and commodified through the digital infrastructure (Lupton 2016). However this does not reduce uncertainty. It creates new measures of social and political worth towards which people are enjoined and impelled to act (Lupton 2015) which create new uncertainties.
Drug users face various problems, stigma, multiple risk vectors such as to their health, legal and citizenship status and reputation. Rhodes outlines the risk matrix which is contextual. Heroin-related risks might be overdose, vein damage, which might be exacerbated by the context in which the drug is taken. Then there are the risks needed to obtain the drug and use it—the tradeoffs with others, the need to manage relationships with partners, children, social services, avoid police etc. Situated rationality should not be seen in individual terms then but rather as these elements being aspects of the context of risk—a social unit of analysis. Cryptomarket users think systematically about these risks and make use of the cryptomarket/darknet infrastructure and associated systems in order to mange them. The concept of responsible harm is introduced. I explore how the cryptomarkets intervene and create their own context.
The behaviour of drug users is regulated in pubs, homes, nightclubs, clinics injection rooms, schools and courts. Informal regulation happens through the risk infrastructure and the valuations of other users. Despite the role of cryptomarkets in de-stigmatising drug use there was still plenty of rage at the presence of people who others use the darknet to avoid, at those who are dependent uncontrolled users, junkies taking the rest for a ride. You might think that what other people do should not matter since it does not materially affect anyone else. However, it does. Any community has obligations and those who appear to break these obligations attract especial rage, as do those who sympathise with them. Those who break the obligations by acting in ways that are associated with junkies and who exhibit undesirable traits such as complaining or being unable to handle their drugs are reviled by others. They are reviled because they symbolically harm the community.
Limitations of this kind of approach being able to address the larger inequities that affected people such as access to services (refs) or to be recognised as a basis for doing that.
1. I’m a beginner so what steroids should I use for building mass and gaining strength?
We advise all beginners to start with oral steroids first. In our opinion the best oral steroid for beginners is Anavar, followed by Turanabol and Winstrol. Danabol/Anadrol are a step above as they have the potential for fast results but with more side effects.
2. I want to lose weight. What do you recommend?
There are several products that can help you with losing weight. Clenbuterol, Ephedryne, Cytomel (T3) and T4. We suggest you use Cytomel (T3) in combination with Anavar, Turanabol or Winstrol. Aditionally, if you can tolerate it, then Clenbuterol is also really efficient.
3. Is it possible to help me create a steroid cycle?
Yes but only if you are serious about buying products. We’ve had a lot of back and forth conversations with potential customers that went on for days/weeks and no purchases were made. If you are serious get in contact with us and don’t forget to mention your goals and previous experience with using steroids.
4. I’m looking for product ‘X’. Will you guys have it in stock in the future?
We’re always looking to expand our product variety so if you’re looking for something that doesn’t appear in the listings (the complete and updated list is available at Dream Market) send us a message and we’ll see what we can do about it.
We have to be circumspect about this though as vendors are not consistent about the products they sell and the qualities they have. Some demonstrate a general interested in harm reduction while others are of the buyer beware view.
Structuring of Risk
There are four structuring axes which involve culture, chemistry, legal/policy context and market structure. The Merkat forum gave people a way of articulating and addressing risks on each axis. I framed culture as involving at one end normalisation and the other pathologisation of certain drug types and forms of use (Barratt et al. 2014). I defined chemistry as those effects attributed to the pharmacological characteristics of the drug and its interaction with the user, which can range from potentially dangerous but possibly rewarding potency to drugs that are attributed with manageable and predictable qualities. Users paid attention to the legal and policy context and its implications for risks from law enforcement activity (Aldridge and Askew 2017). The market infrastructure was also carefully analysed by them, comparing with other markets to asses its reliability and trustworthiness of market actors and technical architecture and its relationship to the rest of the illicit drug market (Beckert and Dewey 2017). Each axis is embedded in different ways in the cryptomarkets, the wider digital infrastructures and associated systems, and national and international policy structures and cultures.
And to [user] hanoi: I feel you man. It sucks having to keep quiet about it, makes it really hard for the average person to get quality harm‐reduction information. But when you don’t keep quiet about it you get estranged from so many people you knew and loved and the binge continues. We are not terrible junkies huddled between trash bins shaking and looking dirty and pathetic without a thought in our head besides who we need to rob to get our next fix. No, I want that perception to change, and the best way to try to get that to happen is to advocate for more responsible drug use from my fellow drug lovers. Opiates/heroin is, in my opinion, one of the greatest drugs in the world, a true gift from ‘god’. It should be respected and used responsibly, not abused and taken for granted, or it will fuck up your world. Forum user ‘Allysbaba’
You must have a super supply of will power if you’ve been an O [opium] chipper [user] for 7 years! O is extremely addictive just like the other opiates. I’m not trying to talk you into continuing your journey, but I feel you because from the sound of your post, I’m on the same journey. Making your own O is so much better and safer than having to risk coins every time you make a darknet purchase, not to mention you’re putting your life in the hands of the vendor in a way. Look what happened to Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Plus less risk with LE [law enforcement]. And I would think O would be less taxing on your liver, kidneys and the rest of your body, since it’s all plant based and no added chemical fillers… at least that’s my experience with O. Forum user ‘spangledust’
Spangledust writes about making your own opioids as a way of reducing risk of law enforcement attention.
Users identified market risks from the use of Bitcoin and the market escrow process used to guarantee sales. Bitcoin is a highly volatile currency. One of the ways of ensuring trusted transactions in the market was for the administrator to keep Bitcoin in escrow until the drugs were delivered, only releasing them when the buyer confirmed, or after a set period of time which vendors did not like. There was in the posts talk about the good etiquette involved in releasing payment when goods arrived and not delaying payment until the last possible moment. Currency volatility meant that the Bitcoin could have a very different value by this point. Some vendors had a ‘finalise early’ option to reduce the risk of losses due to currency fluctuations or to the market closing as the result of an ‘exit scam’; the market administrator leaving with the vendors’ and users’ bitcoin (Moeller et al. 2017). The ‘finalise early’ option involved the release of the customer’s Bitcoin as soon as the deal is agreed. This minimised the risks of the cryptomarket failing or going offline before the transaction was complete. However, this option transfers market risk from the vendor to the customer whose only recourse if the drugs fail to arrive is to leave a bad review or criticise the vendor on the forum. A high level of trust is required for finalise early to work. Market risks is also recognised by other users as stemming from phishing (falsely obtaining private information) or other predatory criminal activity that targeted cryptomarket users.
Users dissect and discuss risks in terms of each of these four dimensions. Users updated each other continually on what risks applied where and how to manage or mitigate them. The different risks were produced in different structural contexts. Normalisation developed through local drug use cultures and the varied acceptance of different drug types and use contexts and involved both drug users and non-users. Chemical risks emerged in the process of drug production and the user’s personal drug history, so these risks were recognised as being embedded in biography as well as pharmacology. Legal and policy risks were shaped by the structure of drug prohibition, surveillance systems the user was exposed to and the priorities of law enforcement agencies. Market risks worked through the process of drug buying as an exchange and as an economic system which was located in the structure of the cryptomarket payment, escrow and review systems. Each dimension worked at a different interface. Users talked about these harms as arising at these different interfaces and discussed harm reduction practice as taking responsibility for risks and harms at each interface.
Peer Support
I’m as transparent as possible about the tests and always disclose if the sample has been bought anonymously or given by the vendor. Theoretically double blind tests would be best but that isn’t feasible at this point. Please decide for yourself if you want to use the information or not. I refrain from publicly giving comments on cocaine vendors, their shipping methods and their products. I will only post the lab test results. There is no lab documentation available for the cocaine that has been tested, the lab results are only provided verbally. The only way to be sure what your powder consists of is to get it tested yourself. Forum user ‘Bugout’
As this user and other users acknowledged, some of the tests were based on free samples provided by vendors in the hope of garnering positive feedback. Vendor testing is open to manipulation as they may provide samples they know are ‘good’ and there is no guarantee that batches are being retested regularly. Many of those users who posted tests stated explicitly that it as part of their commitment to making the cryptomarkets work as a community that was capable of identifying and managing drug-related risks. As one said ‘we all have an interest in drugs, whether selling, buying, researching chemically’ (tester HiKite).
Much of the discussion of drug safety in the Merkat forum was not explicitly badged as such. Users tended not to head for discussion threads on harm reduction or drug safety to discuss problems. They raised them in other threads on the forum, for example as part of discussions about drug quality, about how to use a particular product effectively, and the reliability of particular vendors.
Peer support discussions covered various practical problems. Complaints extended to the general postal and service infrastructure that affected the speed of deliveries, scamming by vendors and having shipments intercepted by customs. Scamming by vendors was not a typical interaction but it was an anticipated risk. Problems were attributed on a combination of naïve ‘n00b’ (new and inexperienced) users and weak or duplicitous management of the site. Other cryptomarket administrators could and did steal from customers and vendors (Duxbury and Haynie 2018; Soska and Christin 2015). During the study, several similar sites fell prey to theft by administrators, or were suspected as having been set up for that purpose in the first place. There are claims that one site had many staff involved in filleting Bitcoin from buyers and sellers who they could then plausibly claim were scammers themselves.
Hello all my underground friends and law enforcement agents who got nothing better to do than watch us citizens safely navigate the e-blackmarket and exchange information and anecdotes about which vendors are legit, our experiences with a variety of chemicals, and safety/harm reduction. Forum user ‘ProfWhite’
It’s so nice that everyone here can talk openly, not be judged, help each other, provide tips and harm reduction tricks – even provide each other with some Bitcoin when they’re short – it really is a beautiful thing:) I trust the people in this thread and they know they can trust me, so it’s just a great feeling to be able to rely on others here. Forum user ‘TrumPet’
For this group of users, harm reduction was a community-focused activity that involved a range of risks from the potential dangers associated with using the drug itself to the legal and social threats of personal exposure, shaming and stigma.
Risk Signalling and Responsible Harm
Buy some (House Lannister and Platinum Standard for me). Test it. Take it only if you are educated enough, conscious enough, and self aware enough to take it responsibly. Make sure you know how the meds that you take on the regular will be effected. Forum user ‘ToddUnctous’
In users’ posts, there is a move away from the idea of risk as an assessment of potential harm to risk as a manageable, normal challenge that comes about in the course of obtaining and using drugs. The educated user has the ‘right stuff’, the right personal characteristics to manage risk before, during and after taking the drug and to incorporate expected harms into their drug use biography. In these postings, the locus of risk is shifted from the drug and drug consumption process to the market structures and the operation of the market as a social process. Users who make points similar to those made by ToddUnctous are showing how aware they are of the market as a social infrastructure and risk as produced through this infrastructure. They acknowledge a range of potential harms related to the drug trade and drug consumption. For them, responsible harm means an approach that recognised that harm could only be minimised so far and that allowed for harm to exist as a likelihood in every user’s drug use biography.
Users draw on a variety of sources for harm reduction advice beyond the Merkat forum. These include open-internet sites such as Reddit and Erowid, harm reduction services and directly from the scientific literature. Many users showed that they are familiar with current academic research. Users posts draw on expert knowledge but they did not cite the authority of experts in their assessment of the trustworthiness of advice given or received. This may reflect the success of public health harm reduction initiatives as a lot of good practice was taken for granted such as using clean needles and properly preparing injecting works accepted as normal.
This is probably the 3rd or 4th time I’ve done cocaine. I think nitrous oxide and ibuprofen have probably done more damage to my brain and body than any cocaine/cut I’ve snorted in the past year. Forum user ‘flame&citron’
Users recognise the association between chemical strength, risk and desire, for example a more unpredictable drug could also be more effective and desirable. Such association is also recognised and evident in the advertising of pharmaceutical and alcohol companies. Users talk about potency as a sign of both risk and of quality. Their counter-public health discourse involved a narrative that was somewhat different from the public health harm reduction narrative. For the educated and informed user, harm reduction practice extends beyond avoiding harm to more effective and safe use of multiple drugs. An advantage of the darknet is that users can obtain a great variety of drugs, in varying strengths and forms. Some presented this as a form of harm reduction. For example, using smokeable heroin to preserve a low tolerance, or using kratom to mitigate the effects of opiate withdrawal.
So I got all the equipment (bulk syringes, needles, micron filters, alcohol swabs, tourniquet, sterile storage vials, sterile water for injection, BA, hand sanitizer for disinfection), put a using schedule into effect (no more then 3 days in a row and never during a workweek) and then got some nice #4 [heroin]. That was about 2 months ago and since then I have used pretty much every weekend. So far I have not had even the slightest inkling of physical w/d [withdrawal] symptoms. … My job hasn’t suffered the slightest (due to get a permanent contract along with a raise), I exercise regularly, eat healthy and continue to lose weight. And I actually learned a few things about medicine and pharmacology in order to be able to enjoy myself as much as I do using heroin while exercising a very high degree of harm reduction. But thats of course just the story of one person. Forum user ‘hot4teacher’
Methadone. Used to help wean addicts off heroin, but a very powerful opiate itself, some refer to it as pure evil, because of the terrible, painful, months long withdrawal symptoms you can experience if you abuse and become addicted to it. ‘dones [methadones] are much better for recreational use than other opiates that are used to wean addicts off heroin in my opinion, such as suboxone. I would take about 10-15mg and I would get a mild euphoric buzz and I always noticed it seemed to come in waves. It can knock your ass out tho if you take too much, I remember being scared I was dying one time when I used it, hah. Forum user ‘loosenutz’
I use very small amounts of sub in my hits. I am a little ashamed to admit, because it is sooo bad for you, and the mark of a worthless junkie, but I crush up the pill and IV it. But this is how little I use, I can make 1 of those 8mg pills last a week if I keep myself relatively under control. Forum user ‘GrimeReaper’
Users of opium-derived drugs discuss how these drugs can substitute for each other in some ways and not in others, and how this is tied to the relative risks they presented. For example, heroin was fast acting and powerful but also presented a risk of addiction. That could be mitigated by using other drugs that worked more slowly, or which combined opioid agonists and antagonists. This attribute can be a positive. Users indicate that they can manage drug dependence by moving from injecting to smoking, or from heroin to opium, substituting other drugs as needed. Their posts indicate a complex understanding of the ways in which drug use history, personal biography, the user’s body and the drug molecule and delivery system interact to produce particular effects, some of which they felt are desirable, others which have to be mitigated.
Dosing and the User’s Body
If your H is rubbish and you’ve not been doing opioids like oxy or subs you will have low tolerance. Take the right dope and a small dose, fifty to seventy five milligrams, and you’ll have a mid-range high. Stick to less than a hundred mgs until you’re sure of how the H you have works on you. Take care if your tolerance depends on rubbish dope. It’s about how your body handles it and you’re the only one who knows that. Forum user ‘Snarkfish’
Tolerance was represented as an attribute of the user’s body that they had to be aware of and both use to assess drug quality and properly titrate their use. It also is acknowledged in advice about dosing. The view that ‘everyone is different’ prevailed, and general rules of thumb are given out by users to advise on what might be expected at different doses. Users share advice on titration, discussing how to produce different kinds of effect with heroin using varying dosage and different injection and smoking techniques.
I expect you’d be okay taking one third of the bag, but it might make you sick if you have a low tolerance. In that case, best to snort a few bumps to test the strength. With a new batch I take small test shots or bumps. You won’t waste much that way. Forum user ‘Minajatrois’
Is it lab grade? Maybe not quite there but certainly among the top gear and purest you can get. It’s a beautiful white, when you put it in water it dissolves away completely, and it draws into the syringe nice and clear. Gives me that warm, pinned feels. Forum user ‘Fakepants’
Impurities were ‘dirt’, in the sense of matter out of place (Douglas 1992). Dirt could include a physical residue left after dissolving heroin to inject it, or bodily reactions such as coughing and hacking. In our study, side effects could be dirt or could be taken as a sign of chemical purity. In this case, there is a difference between more casual users—who saw side effects and comedowns as unwanted dirt contaminating the desired experience—and more regular and experienced users of cocaine and heroin, who saw side effects as a signal of potency and effectiveness .
There is recognition of technique of injecting or smoking as part of the user’s embodied disposition. Users share these techniques and judgements to evaluate the desired qualities of different vendors’ products. Vendors make a greater contribution to these discussions, often defending the process by which they make claims about drug purity. This kind of knowledge is open to challenge. For example, vendors may suggest that critical users do not have the street experience to judge. Vendors and some more experienced forum users saw their role as policing some of the knowledge claims made about product quality and acted in the forum to shut down opposing claims.
Community Safety Net
Being frustrated, having money to cop but having no connects & no where else to look is the fucking worst!! 2 months ago I had all the connects in the world. I couldve stocked up for a rainy day, but back then I also didn’t have enough money to do so (plus I would’ve just done them all anyway). Now I have NOOO connects. Well, 1 connect. He was the back-up to my back-up guy. Now, he’s the ONLY guy I have. It’s damn near pointless buying 6,000,000 grams of Tylenol with 5mg of some damn Oxy.
Second: He has that sweet sweet sweeeeeet brown powder. The problem is my long-time other doesn’t do it and “will not stand for it if I were to do it (again)”. I never IV’d it, only snorted. I know I know, thats a waste. But when you cant get your hands on anything else then why the fuck not?! My connect of 30 & 15mg oxy is lost. PLUS I can’t find all the cool ass pills you guys have (which I am honestly jealous about), and the other connect who had random things whenever I called just fell off the map.
Now I’m waiting on a call for the guy to get off work so he can “hook me up” with some shitty pills. I swear, I’ve been holding off not IV’ing brown, but I’m damn near close to it. I can’t deal with this shit any more. It is worth users investing in community ties to form a safety net for hard times.
Cryptomarkets Are Meeting Points
Cryptomarkets have become meeting points where different kinds of knowledge can be combined and validated (Van Hout and Hearne 2017). They develop a risk infrastructure that provides technical tools, shared knowledge and shareable judgements to manage risk. Cryptomarkets when they work as advertised are protective against law enforcement surveillance, predatory dealers and third-party theft and enabling of drug use that is purposeful and pleasurable, or self-medicating, or for coping with life stresses. There were multiple framings of harm reduction, as avoiding punitive measures and moralising discourse (Keane 2003), and incorporating and promoting the voice of users (Friedman et al. 2007; Pauly 2008). As Munksgaard et al. (2017) state, cryptomarket forums are a place where users can define the ‘normative context’ for drug exchange and use.
In their posts, users focus more on harm management in this context, advocating complex drug use repertoires grounded in different sources of knowledge about drug effects. Some users rely on ‘expert’ knowledge derived from the scientific literature whereas others use personal experience or the reported experience of others. They discuss the ways that drugs typically prescribed for medical management purposes such as naloxone or methadone could be re-tasked for more involved harm management processes and for pleasure. This is typical of the way drug users routinely incorporate harm reduction into their drug using practice (Friedman et al. 2007). Users are a source of lay expertise for others (Jauffret-Roustide 2009), they develop and share protective strategies (Harris and Rhodes 2013), and provide care and support (Drumm et al. 2005). Users are producers of knowledge about harm reduction that can augment, run ahead of, and challenge that of experts.
Many of the findings mirror others about harm management serving broader purposes of community building (Gowan et al. 2012). User priorities are not necessarily those of mainstream public health which was sometimes seen as prioritising more abstract risks over immediate threats to the user (Harris and Rhodes 2012). Their discussion moves the focus of harm reduction from responsibilisation and discipline (Moore 2008) to building on community and self-care. Users are able to adapt medications used for harm reduction to their own needs. Faulkner-Gurstein (2017) outlines how naloxone was initially seen by its manufacturers and public health experts as a technical quick fix to be administered by medical personnel. Users in this way it induced rapid withdrawal in users which was perceived by them as a form of punishment. When they were able to access and administer it themselves users had adapted it and used it as a self-help tool. Such user-driven changes in the cultural context are typical of how it and other medications such as naloxone and subutex are discussed on the cryptomarkets.
In online discussions, some risk factors change or are missing. Risks from purchasing the drug are shifted. There is still the risk that having paid for the drug it is not delivered. However, there is some comeback. The buyer can dispute the order with the market administrator. That may or may not lead to satisfaction. It does change the emotional texture of the experience. The buyer is not at risk of a humiliating like it or leave it situation, so the power differential has altered somewhat.
This forum creates a set of shared systems, tools and knowledge practices that give meaning to and are used to manage risk behaviour: a risk infrastructure. In it users challenge prevailing ‘expert’ risk narratives thus produce a counter-public health. Counter-public health has a long history, under various labels, of examining the formation of health and risk management strategies and of political activism by counter-publics, meaning those marginalised communities exposed to risk (Epstein 1996; Robins 2004). It describes the logic of collective action around risk behaviours that emerges from peer-to-peer communication. It focuses attention on the formation of risk priorities and practices that address health risks but have priorities that differ from and sometimes challenge those of formal public health. For example, there are individuals who prioritise pleasure over stopping risky activities (Hunt et al. 2011), that challenge predominant individualising narratives of the meaning of risky behaviour (Bourgois and Schonberg 2009). This challenging can produce new knowledge that may add to or overturn existing scientific risk paradigms and develop alternative peer-to-peer harm minimisation techniques (Decorte 2001; Van Hout and Bingham 2014). These communities form and are formed from political engagement to varying degrees. The original Silk Road was a site of political and philosophical discussion which is less evident in the markers that have replaced it as the users of the new cryptomarkets become more driven by concerns about security and usability (Munksgaard and Demant 2016).
Seen in this way, cryptomarkets become the location for shared knowledge production formed around potential drug risks . They link to the wider ‘demimonde’ of alternative communities (Maddox et al. 2016) whereby participants enact alternative value structures and create protocols and knowledge sets in relation to drug exchange and use (Munksgaard and Demant 2016). Cryptomarkets are particularly interesting as they are both a mode of obtaining drugs and are at least in principle designed to promote professional and accountable transactions and interactions between buyers and users (Barratt et al. 2016). The design and use of cryptomarkets can be seen as a response to the generation and distribution of risks through drug prohibition and the discursive stigmatisation of them. They allow drug users to take risks and introduce deliberation and comparison into the drug buying process. There is co-production of harm reduction information and practice in the cryptomarkets between vendors, users and harm reduction experts who contribute to some forums. Some cryptomarkets also allow for some co-production of harm reduction products. For example, the now closed Alphabay market encouraged vendors to provide the opioid agonist naloxone by waiving the vendor bond for those who did (Gilbert and Dasgupta 2017).
Users of cryptomarkets can be seen as setting up an alternative, counter power structure to frame and manage risk which gives weight to the structural, political and legal factors which create risks for them (Munksgaard and Demant 2016). This draws on and integrates some important insights from public health and harm reduction but also challenges some of the values implicit in them, especially the idea of harm reduction and risk minimisation. Responsible harm is a useful way of thinking about these processes by providing an avenue for the articulation and analysis of user evaluation, minimisation and accounting for harm. The cryptomarket enables some users to make informed choices about the risks they want to take. Responsible harm meant constructing a risk agenda that incorporates some controlled risk but allows for a degree of unpredictability in drug taking. While users are motivated by harm reduction, they also question some of its implications. In their view, constructive risk taking can create a context which is supportive and controlled.
Conclusion
Competing ideas of harm exist under the same term. Harm reduction necessarily has to accommodate with competing political agendas. It emerged from and is sustained by activists, users and communities and explicitly concerns values as part of health (Boucher et al. 2017). Cryptomarkets do not remove risk but do they do reconfigure harm. Structural risks still exist, for example users may still have to engage in sex work to obtain money and expose themselves to attendant vulnerabilities. A user who earns cash through sex work and exchanges it for heroin is not in a position to leave that complex set of negotiations and obligations and simply ‘buy it on the darknet’. So there are strict limits to the cryptomarkets’ harm reduction potential to transform the power relationships that exist in the offline drug market. Indeed the offline market may serve existing users adequately in many situations. We should also move beyond background assumptions that the offline ‘street’ is automatically more risky and has no inherent advantages (Abel and Fitzgerald 2012).
The potential of the cryptomarkets is less their ability to systematically alter the harm-utility relationship and more their ability to de-link some of these overlapping structural elements. A key change is the separation of drug distribution from other environments, for example, from sexual exchange, nightclubs, and shooting galleries. New inequalities emerge. Users need resources to access cryptomarkets such as stable address for drug delivery, internet access and use skills or access to people who have them. One of the changes the cryptomarkets wrought is in relative power between different groups of users and vendors. Power has not flattened. Administrators have a great deal and there is suspicion by users of extensive collusion between them and vendors. Having said that, the relative dis-embedding from existing contexts that cryptomarkets have engineered does allow for users to combine a greater range of knowledge sources when they examine risk and harm in relation to specific products on offer. They are also able to articulate narratives of drug use that resist stigmatisation, pathologisation, and criminalisation. The benefits of the cryptomarkets therefore extend from being a novel form of illicit drug distribution and into their ability reconfigure the cultural meaning and recognition of drug use.