Buying drugs on the dark web is often seen as a safer alternative to navigating an unpredictable, adulterated local supply. But is this notion consistently accurate? To put it to the test, a team of researchers analyzed the composition of over 60,000 drug samples—some purchased from the dark web, some bought in-person.
Their study, recently published in the journal Addiction, uncovered a complicated relationship between the quality of drugs and their source. While the dark web offered a safer supply of some substances, others appeared more reliable when purchased offline.
Coauthor Dr. Monica Barratt, a senior research fellow at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, said that this potential mismatch between expectation and reality is what motivated the team to conduct the research.
“A lot of the harms that come from using drugs arise from prohibition. And these sorts of marketplaces can end up with potentially a safer supply,” she told Filter. “But without the data, it’s like, is that actually true?”
The researchers focused on the five most common drugs sent in for testing: MDMA, cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine and LSD.
To find out, Barratt and her collaborators partnered with two of the world’s largest drug-checking services: Energy Control, an international NGO headquartered in Spain, and the Drugs Information and Monitoring System (DIMS), a national service commissioned by the Ministry of Health in the Netherlands. Both agencies shared test results for all samples submitted to their labs from 2016 through 2021, including FTIR, mass spectrometry and several other analytic techniques.
The researchers focused on the five most common drugs sent in for testing—MDMA, cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine and LSD—to ensure that there would be enough data points to produce reliable results in each case. They only included samples that were purchased in-person or on dark-web cryptomarkets, excluding samples that participants simply stated were from “the internet.” In total, 62,596 drug samples met these criteria.
Using the lab data about each sample’s composition, the research team investigated whether drugs from the dark web were more likely to contain the substance advertised and less likely to contain contaminants, compared to those bought offline. They also compared the average strength of drugs from each source.
Their conclusions were mixed.
When purchased on the dark web, drugs sold as MDMA (in both powder and pill form), cocaine and LSD were significantly more likely to contain the substance advertised. This tallies with the idea that when buyers are often able to leave reviews on dark-web marketplaces, vendors there may be more accountable than their in-person counterparts.
For amphetamine and methamphetamine, however, there was no difference between dark-web and offline samples.
Similarly, some cryptomarket drugs—MDMA powder and cocaine—were far less likely to contain adulterants. But others—amphetamine and LSD—were found to be more likely to be adulterated than samples acquired in-person.
Finally, while MDMA powder, cocaine and meth purchased on the dark web tended to have higher purity, dark-web MDMA pills and amphetamine had lower purity on average.
“I would imagine if we conducted this same study in the US or in Australia, it would be quite different.”
To wrap their heads around these contradictory results, the authors developed substance-specific explanations for how “the dynamics of the cryptomarket” might influence drug composition. For example, the ample in-person supply of MDMA in the Netherlands may drive the differences observed between cryptomarket and offline sources.
More broadly, the researchers stress that findings would differ depending on which local supplies are being tested, so their results must not be taken as universal.
“One of the caveats of the study is that the comparison group is the Netherlands, which is where most of the MDMA in the world comes from,” Barratt explained. “I would imagine if we conducted this same study in the US or in Australia, it would be quite different … the [offline] comparison group would be more adulterated.”
In Barratt’s eyes, these far-from-straightforward results underscore the importance of expanding drug checking services. When you can’t necessarily count on cryptomarkets offering a safer supply, local drug checking becomes even more essential.
Barratt also emphasized that, as drug checking continues to be legalized, new service providers should prioritize asking people more specific questions about the source of their submitted samples.
“It’s a sensitive question to ask,” she admitted, “but I doubt many of those services are asking the question in the right way.”
Asking the “right way,” according to Barratt, should yield enough information about the source of the substance to understand what type of risk it poses to the community if it turns out to be adulterated. This includes asking participants who say that their drugs are from “the internet” to provide more detail, if they feel comfortable doing so.
Barratt envisions a future where harm reduction strategies are tailored to the source of the drug.
“If we find something particularly nasty and it turns out you’ve got them from, you know, an overseas darknet, that’s kind of important for us to know,” she explained. “It’s different if you got it from a local dealer, because then that local supply is here, and we probably need to do an alert.”
Barratt envisions a future where harm reduction strategies are tailored to the source of the drug. If a drug checking service knows where a substance came from, they can decide whether it’s more appropriate to share any alarming results locally or online.
“I feel like there’s a gap there, especially for peers and people maybe who straddle both worlds,” Barratt noted. “They might be harm reduction workers who also understand the dark net, who might then get some funding to actually go in there and do digital outreach.”
A single study can’t definitively prove whether the dark web offers a safer supply. But these results suggest that, while some substances were indeed less likely to be adulterated, purchasing there is not a silver-bullet harm reduction strategy—and that testing remains vital whatever the source. By paying close attention to where adulterated substances were purchased, local drug checking services can help participants make more informed decisions to protect their health.
Photograph by Wellness GM via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0
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