There are two websites where you can add a gram of heroin to your shopping cart as if you were buying asparagus on Fresh Direct. One belongs to Sigma-Aldrich, the St. Louis chemical company that synthesizes pure opioids for use in laboratory studies. For this you need to be a federally accredited laboratory. The other is Silk Road, the anonymous marketplace where drugs are priced in untraceable Bitcoin currency. For this you just need an internet connection.
Most of us do so much online shopping, and the interface has become so standardized, that the bland machinery of ecommerce is part of the texture of our waking lives: clicking “add to shopping cart” is like flicking a light switch. So although you might be perturbed if a salesperson offered you heroin from behind a department store counter, the aesthetic of the product page makes the transaction seem instantly mundane. Really, the only surprise is that Amazon hasn’t gotten into the game already. It’s strange to recall that rock music once made the act of buying drugs sound as mythically cool as the act of taking them. Today, Lou Reed would go to Silk Road instead of Lexington and 125th, and the man he’d be waiting for a week later would be totally unwitting, and from UPS.
Silk Road got a lot of publicity in 2011 for its heroin and LSD offerings; most of the websites that sell recreational drugs specialize in experimental compounds imported from China, still legal or quasi-legal because no legislative body can possibly keep up with an enterprising chemist. However, to dodge broader regulations about what you can encourage people to put in their bodies, most of these drugs are advertised under some other category: bath salts, plant food, pool cleaner. Like the ecommerce interface itself, the product pages are redolent of dull domestic life. So far, the most popular of these drugs is mephedrone (not to be confused with methadone), a substitute for MDMA that arrived in the UK in around 2009 and in the US last year. Mephedrone became famous in the British tabloids as “Meow Meow,” a “street name” that turned out to have been the invention of a lone Wikipedia user. It’s now been banned almost everywhere, after being implicated in a handful of deaths (and one notorious face-eating, which later turned out to have nothing to do with it). But dozens of its relatives still count as legal highs.
While Silk Road is like eBay, many of the websites offering “research chemicals” are more like Zappos: full-featured specialist retailers that operate openly and expect to be around for long enough that it’s worth investing in customer retention. These websites don’t just have shopping carts and checkouts: they also have user reviews, product alerts, seasonal sales and multiple worldwide delivery options. (“Really great product these pellets are. compared to the “o5” pellets, and the 6apb powder ive had from numerous sources, these absolutely blew me away. 2 pellets made for an amazing reaction, the 5apb adds SO much to the mix. Also, top notch customer support and service, as usual. Shipped same day. rc-lab is always a pleasure to do business with.”) We all know from The Wire that drug dealers have learned a lot from the marketing techniques of legitimate businesses. But the timing of their seasonal sales, for instance, doesn’t quite make sense: it’s not as if you need to clear out all your heavy winter junk to make way for the graceful new spring collections. One wonders if the retailers are so delighted with their off-the-shelf e-commerce platforms that they’ve decided to imitate more mainstream websites by any other means that occur to them.
There is, however, one area in which they really fall down, and that’s friendliness to the newbie. Methoxetamine, methiopropamine, ethylphenidate, etizolam, benzofuran, camfetamine, pentedrone—who can keep up? The merchants can give you the best customer service in the world, but the one thing they can’t do is explain the effect of these drugs and how much you might want to swallow, because, remember, they’re only selling plant food. Could it be that, just when it seemed like the internet was robbing the drug world of all its dangerous glamor, the problem’s actually just been flipped upside down? In the old days, you knew what you wanted but didn’t know where to get it. In 2013, you can get almost anything but have no idea what it is.
Most of us do so much online shopping, and the interface has become so standardized, that the bland machinery of ecommerce is part of the texture of our waking lives: clicking “add to shopping cart” is like flicking a light switch. So although you might be perturbed if a salesperson offered you heroin from behind a department store counter, the aesthetic of the product page makes the transaction seem instantly mundane. Really, the only surprise is that Amazon hasn’t gotten into the game already. It’s strange to recall that rock music once made the act of buying drugs sound as mythically cool as the act of taking them. Today, Lou Reed would go to Silk Road instead of Lexington and 125th, and the man he’d be waiting for a week later would be totally unwitting, and from UPS.Silk Road got a lot of publicity in 2011 for its heroin and LSD offerings; most of the websites that sell recreational drugs specialize in experimental compounds imported from China, still legal or quasi-legal because no legislative body can possibly keep up with an enterprising chemist. However, to dodge broader regulations about what you can encourage people to put in their bodies, most of these drugs are advertised under some other category: bath salts, plant food, pool cleaner. Like the ecommerce interface itself, the product pages are redolent of dull domestic life. So far, the most popular of these drugs is mephedrone (not to be confused with methadone), a substitute for MDMA that arrived in the UK in around 2009 and in the US last year. Mephedrone became famous in the British tabloids as “Meow Meow,” a “street name” that turned out to have been the invention of a lone Wikipedia user. It’s now been banned almost everywhere, after being implicated in a handful of deaths (and one notorious face-eating, which later turned out to have nothing to do with it). But dozens of its relatives still count as legal highs.
While Silk Road is like eBay, many of the websites offering “research chemicals” are more like Zappos: full-featured specialist retailers that operate openly and expect to be around for long enough that it’s worth investing in customer retention. These websites don’t just have shopping carts and checkouts: they also have user reviews, product alerts, seasonal sales and multiple worldwide delivery options. (“Really great product these pellets are. compared to the “o5” pellets, and the 6apb powder ive had from numerous sources, these absolutely blew me away. 2 pellets made for an amazing reaction, the 5apb adds SO much to the mix. Also, top notch customer support and service, as usual. Shipped same day. rc-lab is always a pleasure to do business with.”) We all know from The Wire that drug dealers have learned a lot from the marketing techniques of legitimate businesses. But the timing of their seasonal sales, for instance, doesn’t quite make sense: it’s not as if you need to clear out all your heavy winter junk to make way for the graceful new spring collections. One wonders if the retailers are so delighted with their off-the-shelf e-commerce platforms that they’ve decided to imitate more mainstream websites by any other means that occur to them.
There is, however, one area in which they really fall down, and that’s friendliness to the newbie. Methoxetamine, methiopropamine, ethylphenidate, etizolam, benzofuran, camfetamine, pentedrone—who can keep up? The merchants can give you the best customer service in the world, but the one thing they can’t do is explain the effect of these drugs and how much you might want to swallow, because, remember, they’re only selling plant food. Could it be that, just when it seemed like the internet was robbing the drug world of all its dangerous glamor, the problem’s actually just been flipped upside down? In the old days, you knew what you wanted but didn’t know where to get it. In 2013, you can get almost anything but have no idea what it is.
by Ned Beauman, N+1 | Read more:
Image: Image copyright (c) 2010 by J. Peter Siriprakorn
