A Heroin Dealer Tells the Silk Road Jury What It Was Like to Sell Drugs Online

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/silk-road-heroin-dealer-testifies/

by edward • 11 years ago

76 91 11 years ago

deciplex2• 11 years ago

Aside from offering a hands-on account of how the Silk Road worked from a dealer’s perspective, Duch’s story calls into question claims that the Silk Road reduced violence by moving drug sales from the street to the relative safety of the internet. Duch’s testimony seemed to suggest that he wouldn’t have sold drugs at all if it weren’t for the Silk Road...

Wow. What a stupendous flaw in logic and reasoning. I guess I'm glad that the fool who wrote this isn't in charge of building bridges or something, where his astonishing stupidity could directly get people killed. He'll just have to settle for indirectly getting people killed by parroting state propaganda and perpetuating the war on drugs.

Obviously, the fact that different people were dealing the drugs on the Silk Road, than on the street, does not in any way serve as evidence that Silk Road did not reduce the risk to both dealers and especially users, in buying drugs.

I mean, it seems like Ulbricht really did put out hits on some people - or at least the state is pressing ahead with the charges anyway, and if that's the case he is a danger to society and needs to be locked up. But in terms of harm reduction Silk Road was pretty awesome (fwiw, I never used the service). Not only did it derisk buying and selling drugs, in many cases it would have taken money directly out of the pockets of large drug cartels (i.e. in cases where they didn't control the supply anyway, only the distribution). That's a cause everyone should get behind.

The whole ordeal here just drives the point home, that the drug war is not at all about harm reduction for anybody, not users, certainly not dealers, and not even society at large. I'm not sure the drug war is about anything at this point. It's just a self-perpetuating relic of the past, and it needs to be put down ASAFP.

mikeyouse• 11 years ago

I'm fairly ignorant with the workings of the drug markets but is there any scenario in which a cartel controls distribution and not supply? It seems like by increasing the demand for drugs, the cartels who actually produce the drugs will actually be better off with Silk Road operating.

andreasklinger• 11 years ago

As in every market the real value is in distribution

I would assume Drug production is a commodity market (also within US borders)

deciplex2• 11 years ago

Probably not many. But, the point is that they can't use violence to corner the market for distribution anymore, with something like Silk Road around. Provided dealers remain anonymous, there is no "turf". This simultaneously cuts down on drug-related violence, and takes money out of the pocket of cartels by making the drug market more competitive.

It's not perfect, because if they still control supply they can still exert pressure on distribution. And, while Silk Road may be anonymous, obviously buying drugs in bulk from the cartels is not. But it's a step in the right direction, however small.

kissickas4• 11 years ago

Why should cartels be involved at all? Unorganized suppliers and distributors could have run the whole market. I don't see any mention of cartels or gangs in the article.

coffeemug2• 11 years ago

But in terms of harm reduction Silk Road was pretty awesome (fwiw, I never used the service). Not only did it derisk buying and selling drugs...

I don't see how it follows that derisking drug sales necessarily didn't increase harm. Yes, if you were selling drugs on Silk Road you were less likely to get into a violent confrontation with a client. Yes, if you were buying drugs on Silk Road you were less likely to get into a violent confrontation with the dealer. But the claim here is that Silk Road also dramatically reduced barriers to entry for both buyers and sellers for very serious drugs.

Heroin is no joke and no amount of pseudo-libertarian drug legalization arguments make it any safer. If Silk Road made it available to a dramatically broader audience that otherwise wouldn't have been able to get it, the harm to society, on balance, must have been enormous.

The whole ordeal here just drives the point home, that the drug war is not at all about harm reduction for anybody, not users, certainly not dealers, and not even society at large.

Heroin isn't weed. It destroys lives of its users and certainly harms the society at large. To say otherwise is preposterous, at best.

mathetic• 11 years ago

I like how you conveniently ignored the parent's comments about cartels.

Also I don't understand the use of "pseudo-libertarian" here? Drug usage is a personal decision and it's none of state's business. That is the very definition of libertarianism.

It has nothing to do with Silk Road but since you brought it up, legalising drug usage is for the greater good. You see the real danger does not originate from violent confrontations but the circles the the usage drags you in. If it was legally available, there wouldn't be need for an individual to get involved for their recreational needs.

On a medical perspective, it is common not to help out a friend having adverse reactions to a drug used simply because it is incriminating if you call the hospital and then stay with him/her.

And as if this wasn't enough, people just don't seem to get that the war on drugs has been lost in every continent. It will just go on and on and on. You can make it safer, peaceful and prevent it to be a source of revenue for actual crimes, or just don't give a crap and be irresponsible.

mapt• 11 years ago

It can, but we have pretty abundant evidence now that the treatment we chose for the threat of heroin, the drug war, has a much worse net effect on society than the disease of unchallenged heroin addiction.

maccard2• 11 years ago

Heroin isn't weed. It destroys lives of its users

Well, no more than any other addiction to opiates. The issue with heroin addiction is that 1) it's illegal; (in many places) 2) it's expensive as hell. Clean Heroin by itself has no majorly bad side effects that aren't associated with other (legal and regularly used/abused) opiates like oxy/hydrocodene. Constipation and cotton mouth are about all that comes to mind. The risks are the same as any other street drugs; bad batches, reusing needles, dirty needles, and unmonitored usage.

I'm not saying heroin is good, by any means, but it's not as bad as it's sold as.

icebraining• 11 years ago

Heroin isn't weed. It destroys lives of its users and certainly harms the society at large. To say otherwise is preposterous, at best.

deciplex didn't say it wasn't. Read the phrase again.

In fact, it's exactly because heroin is harmful that an approach that actually has a chance of reducing its use - unlike the aforementioned drug war - is in dire need.

klibertp• 11 years ago

Heroin isn't weed. It destroys lives of its users and certainly harms the society at large.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8965411

Also a sibling comment maccard. Also google "krokodil".

In short it's not heroin that destroys lives, it's idiotic policy which makes heroin (or other opiates) very expensive (destroying users' careers and relationships) or unavailable (destroying users' health via them trying to substitute it with something much worse).

The only real threat of opiates is overdosing, which comes from increasing tolerance and uncertain quality of a drug. Making opiates legal and quality-checked and allowing to develop substances that would reduce possibility of increasing tolerance would make opiates just as safe as weed, and certainly safer than alcohol.

But that wouldn't work, because... what? I'm curious.

byEngineer5• 11 years ago

there is no logical arguments behind keeping it illegal. Just emotional stuff. That's the problem i dislike hard liners on drugs legality so much. They are like cult members and can't talk to their reason.

How is it your business if someone's injecting heroin? Is this your business? By the Constituion? By comparison to alcohol or weed? None of your business. The same way like guns. I can buy gun to hurt you, and that's fine, but can't get some chemicals to hurt myself? Where is logic here brother?

There is none. Just emotional BS. Get over it. As crash in 1929 legalized alcohol and we don't have beer dealers shooting each other (we used to have them!!!). As crash in 2008 legalized weed in large parts of the country, the same way next crash will legalize rest of it.

In this economy I don't have so much money to spend on somebody's else life. Sorry. And now start your emotional cry.

Meekro• 11 years ago

I assume many drug users transitioned from patronizing violent street dealers, to non-violent silk road dealers. In the long run, the violent street dealers would lose their customer base and go out of business. Seems like a good thing to me.

eps• 11 years ago

Duch’s heroin shipments from a Monroe, New York post office ... disguised with a fake return address.

That bulk mail envelope scanning program sure must've came handy for tracking the origin of his shipments.

kissickas4• 11 years ago

Any idea of how he did get caught? I've searched around briefly but haven't found anything.

zqxwce• 11 years ago

Same question.

duiker101• 11 years ago

By late 2012, he was buying painkillers from the Silk Road, which he says he heard about from news media

This is an interesting part for me. "Exposing" it, actually brought more customers.

cmdkeen4• 11 years ago

There are a few interesting takeaways: - Pain perscriptions as a gateway to more hardcore drug use that destroys life, it doesn't sound like this individual had any "liberty" to make choices once he had become hooked on painkillers

- Heroin addictions are incredibly expensive in monetary terms, at $3,500 a week the price reduction would have to be huge before any legal drug wouldn't continue to create acquisitive crime to fund it

- Heroin addictions are incredibly expensive in terms of destroyed careers and relationships. Sure some users function normally, but you cannot know whether you're going to succumb or not before embarking - and that is the problem.

nostrademons2• 11 years ago

There's historical precedent for legalized heroin - it's the opium dens of the mid/late 19th century. I don't think that's a world that many people want to go back to.

Most of the time when people talk about drug legalization, they mean things like marijuana, LSD, or ecstasy.

herendin• 11 years ago

opium dens

The modern equivalent is spending hours watching reality TV and eating fast food.

Not trying to be snarky. I mean it.

byEngineer5• 11 years ago

why not to legalize something that hurts just the one who takes it? The same logic would require us to delegalize alcohol. Remember, we had booze dealers with machine guns terrorizing whole cities, like Chicago, before we came back to our senses and legalized it.

Can you see Corona dealers fighting with Coors dealers for a territory to sell beer? Why not? This is the EXACT reality of 1920s in this country.

I don't care if some idiots are going to kill themselves. As if we didn't have enough economic issues and ways to spend money, to spend so much on prisons, police force and all this other BS to deal with somebody's addiction.

I will tell you what will happen. As 1929 crash forced us to legalize alcohol, the same way 2008 forced us to legalize weed. Hopefully next crash will force us to legalize rest of it and start making money on it to find education vs. taking money from education to keep juvenile institutions staffed with guards.

vertex-four• 11 years ago

I don't think that's a world that many people want to go back to.

Not knowing much about this, could I ask why?

girvo5• 11 years ago

Heroin is... Interesting. I was an addict for 6 years. I ran two businesses (one successfully), held down excellent jobs for amazing agencies, built cool stuff, had numerous relationships that were both good and bad.

Most of heroin's issues arise because of its illegality, coupled with its price. I was spending $400 a day. It's nearly impossible to keep afloat with that sort of outgoing expense. Heroin also makes me grumpier than I typically am, and I wouldn't wish the withdrawals on my worst enemy.

But on the other hand, it has few negative physical effects in the long term, which I find amazingly curious. I've been clean for three years now, and if I didn't tell you you'd never know what I'd done. That's odd, in my opinion, considering its reputation. If I'd drunk the equivalent amount of alcohol every day for six years, I'd doubt that would be the case.

Like any drug, being illegal distorts the market and causes issues that wouldn't exist with it legal, however I would never want to see it legal the same way alcohol is. It's simply dangerous above and beyond things like weed. I'm truly not sure how i feel about it, to be honest. I just know that I would never use it again, regardless of its legal status.

andrey-p• 11 years ago

Thanks for sharing this. If you don't mind me asking, how did you find the experience of getting rid of that habit? What got you to finally try and defeat it?

hessenwolf• 11 years ago

This is interesting, as it turns my viewpoint on its head. I firmly believed heroin addicts were all zombies. You are arguing they are quite completely saveable.

It changes my view on whether it is useful to help somebody. Do you have any references for this?

stickfigure3• 11 years ago

...at $3,500 a week the price reduction would have to be huge before any legal drug wouldn't continue to create acquisitive crime to fund it

I infer from this statement that you believe that, in the case of legalization, the price would still be high enough to require crime. Do you have any reason to believe that heroin is inherently more expensive to manufacture than, say, aspirin?

Also, unless heroin addiction skews towards the top five-percenters, $3500 per week is a distant outlier.

cmdkeen4• 11 years ago

The UK estimates that between a third and a half of all acquisitive crime in the UK is committed by class A drug users.

You're assuming that in the case of legalisation there wouldn't be sin taxes, which given alcohol and cigarettes (and indeed weed) would be incredibly unlikely.

The problem with heroin is that once you are abusing it you need more and more but it starts to destroy your ability to earn the funds to pay for it.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/financial-cost-of...

army• 11 years ago

Heroin still requires growing poppies. Aspirin can be be synthesized.

Zangela• 11 years ago

“I saw the relative ease that came with it,” he told the court. “It seemed like something I could get away with.” < Sell drugs throught Internet, it is accessable for a lot of people, which makes it an easy way to exchange drugs, and that might increase the people to do drugs.

norswap• 11 years ago

Trying to sway the jury with emotional impact rather than appeals to reason is not how it should be done.

brainburn• 11 years ago

Yeah I wonder what other purpose this testimony could have.

Seems to me a moment where a lawyer in the movies would shout 'objection, relevancy' or something.

narag• 11 years ago

The reason is stablishing two facts: that he wouldn't have sold if not for SR and that the buyers wouldn't have bought if not for SR. Also in he article you'll find why: it's a rebuttal to some defense's argument.

I would have asked the witness the source of the $3,500 before he had access to Silk Road. But it doesn't seem just an arbitrary emotional trick.

martinko• 11 years ago

True, but this is not his trial.

chiph• 11 years ago

Ideally, no. But it works.

madaxe_again3• 11 years ago

It reads more like "A heroin dealer tells the silk road jury what the prosecutor damned well told him to say"

"Duch also described how the Silk Road’s customer base allowed him to reach buyers who he believed wouldn’t have otherwise had access to his product. "

ergo, one of their arguments is going to be that SR created a drug market, and made addicts of innocent children who were looking for my little pony pictures and got tricked into taking smack.

jeffreyrogers2• 11 years ago

ergo, one of their arguments is going to be that SR created a drug market, and made addicts of innocent children who were looking for my little pony pictures and got tricked into taking smack.

Doesn't that seem reasonable? Not in the extreme form you've taken at least, but in a milder form. It seems reasonable to me that a number of people who otherwise would not try heroin due to lack of access might try it if getting it becomes convenient enough.

It's naive to assume that just because getting drugs is relatively easy that making it easier won't increase the number of people who decide to use drugs. Just as it is wrong for prosecutors to bend reality to fit their interpretation of the facts, it is wrong of those in favor of drug reform to bend reality to fit their interpretation. I would love to see more reasonable drug laws, and I'm probably far more libertarian than most in what changes I'd like to see, however, I recognize that by improving access to drugs you probably will also increase the number of people who do drugs, all else remaining constant.

madaxe_again3• 11 years ago

But that's the thing - I don't believe that it did increase access in any substantive fashion - you can go virtually anywhere on the planet, and find someone selling the usual suspects. From those who I know who used SR (fully aware this is apocryphal!), usage actually generally decreased, as rather than buying large quantities infrequently from a local dealer (less risk), folks would buy smaller quantities more often, and thus moderate their consumption.

The only things which certainly proliferated more readily as a result of SR would be RCs (Research Chemicals), which your shady park dealer does not usually carry.

Either way, I reckon that this argument will be pivotal in their case, and they will, over the course of the trial, present hockey-stick graphs showing that SR has turned the entire planet into heroin users.

So - I don't reckon this will have increased the number of people taking drugs. I would rather think that it may have encouraged people to experiment more than they otherwise would have due to increased access, but only in the case of people who are prior users of recreational substances - and as above, if anything, it reduced consumption in areas where a "street" supply already existed.

dimitar• 11 years ago

Duch himself was initially addicted to painkillers and due to the price and lack of access to them took up heroin. He probably did reach a lot of painkiller addicts that wouldn't have bought heroin without his aid. The economic proof of this is the huge markup he added (100%). If heroin was so available on the street they would have just bought it themselves.

Now in a better world, the opioid addicts would have quit and the government would have mitigated the issue by giving them methadone for free. But regardless of whether this is the case, he did cause harm to his clients and society as a whole by hooking up to a more dangerous drug while they were at a vulnerable state.

madaxe_again3• 11 years ago

No - the economic proof isn't proof whatsoever - he was buying in bulk from a mid/top dealer, and 100% markup is actually pretty moderate when dealing in controlled substances - consider also that your oh-so-friendly shady dude on a corner is cutting everything with everything, which is also markup, whereas SR dealers did not, if they wanted to stay in business.

Folks bought from SR not because of increased availability, but due to decreased risk. Less interaction with dealers, less chance of law enforcement involvement, and you know what you're buying.

Heroin isn't something that people just one day wake up and decide to do. It spreads socially - the vast, vast, VAST majority of users ended up so because someone they know uses.

I live in a small, conservative, "safe" city - and I could pop out and come back with a sack of MDMA, weed/hash and heroin, if I so chose - but I don't.

I promise you, this shit is everywhere. You just don't see it unless you either go looking or it's shown to you.

A Heroin Dealer Tells the Silk Road Jury What It Was Like to Sell Drugs Online

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