Tip for darknet drug lords: Don't wear latex gloves to the post office Delivery is the weakest link in the “dark web” drug trade: the postal habits of a large-scale trader have led to his undoing. Chukwuemeka Okparaeke is accused of dealing in very nasty stuff: Fentanyl, a high-strength synthetic opioid the Centre for Disease Control says is 50 times the potency of heroin and was responsible for …
There's a sampling bias here: The less-competent the criminal, the greater the chance of getting caught. You hear about this one because he made a stupid mistake, but you don't hear about his rival drug dealer who uses full-device encryption and does not wear latex gloves to the post office.
That's the sort of thing that's going to attract attention because it isn't something one normally does. In the winter it would be easy to wear winter gloves. The summer would be more of a problem, but assuming he's worried about fingerprints just coating his fingertips with superglue would quite effectively obscure his prints in a way a passerby wouldn't notice.
Why would he need gloves to carry the packages to the post office? If he can absorb lethal amounts from the packaging, I'd worry for the life of the mail handlers who touch it along the way to its destination!
Surely if he's careful, he can keep the residue on the outside almost non-existent. If he takes that one and packs it into another box, and then another, he can reduce the residue to an arbitrarily small amount.
I thought "fingerprints" too, but wondered if he could have been OCD ?
I knew a student who wore thick rubber gloves all the time, because he considered the PC lab keyboards, library books and so on to be "unclean".
(Looking at the proxy logs for the labs, he may have had a point, dirty little devils - mind you, the staff were FAR worse in that gig !)
I'm not talking about ordinary Marigolds here either, these were like extra-thick gauntlets and looked like the sort of thing you'd wear for handling really nasty chemicals - so you can imagine what that did for his typing speed.
Eventually, he sought treatment, and it was heartening to see him switch to lighter surgical gloves, then cotton ones, and eventually stop wearing them altogether.
pretty sure everyone (edit to "most" as absolutes are never correct...waitaminnit...) taking this stuff knew what they were getting, and I suspect even went to extensive effort to obtain the stuff.
Unless any of the '10000 deaths' were someone forced to try the stuff, then the drug is not responsible for those deaths. those who sought it out because of its potency, thru ignorance or arrogance and took it.
the "responsibility" lies with the humans who misuse. How many users have gotten exactly what they wanted at the risk level they were comfortable with and side effects they accept? if 10K died, and the stuff is still popular, that'd mean a LOT more than 10K people partook in the same time period, no?
Fine. The drug might not be totally responsible for these deaths. But can we at least agree that the author's keyboard is responsible for sloppy turns of phrase?
Mr. Chirgwin, you need to have a word with that lazy Logitech 105-key.
And now, if you don't mind, I am off to explain to my doctor that the free snacks in my office are responsible for my potbelly.
I guess that the majority of the deaths happened because users didn't know what they were getting. I'm sure that while there are some very scrupulous, diligent and professional drug dealers who can usually be relied upon to deliver a quality product that matches the description, there are many more cowboys and thieves who simply don't give a shit. That's what you get when you criminalise a market.
Then there's always the issue with cutting drugs to make more profit. If your average user is used to a product that's cut to shit and they happen to come across something that's unexpectedly pure (say something stolen from a dealer before he's had a chance to cut it), that's a sure-fire way to overdose (the so-called "hot-shot").
Also, even doctors can prescribe a wrong dose. Your margin for error with fentalyn is much less, given how potent it is. Given that many dealers will be drug users themselves, it's easy to imagine that their judgement might be a bit impaired when it comes to handling fentalyn properly...
Anyway, in summary, I'm all for safe supply chains and educated users being able to manage their addictions in a way that minimises risk/harm for everyone, but the black market doesn't supply that.
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