Alleged $100M dark-web drug kingpin, 23, arrested A 23-year-old Taiwanese man was arrested in New York for allegedly running the $100 million global dark web narcotics e-commerce operation known as Incognito Market. That's according to a Monday announcement by the US Department of Justice (DoJ). "The arrest of 'Incognito Market' owner Rui-Siang Lin is a result of the …
Obviously drugs being illegal to sell without license bring in adrenaline junkies and also let dealers sell at massive profit and tax free.
So in these terms bringing in £78m is nothing to write home about.
The actual challenge would be to bring £78m selling legal stuff. That is hard.
OK, let's pursue that idea a little.
You're going to require a jury for the trial. These days potential jury members are going to be drawn from a wider spread of the population and attitudes than when death sentences were normal, at least in societies like the UK. The prosecution then has the problem of risking one member of the jury who, whether from principle, awareness of the possibility of miscarriage of justice* or squeamishness, is not prepared to vote for killing someone and getting a not-guilty verdict against even the strongest possible evidence.
So how are you going to deal with that? Allow for majority verdicts? Given the risk of miscarriage of justice for a capital offence public opinion might not allow for that. But if majority verdicts are to be banned for one category of offence perhaps they should be banned altogether? You'll open up a can of worms going down that route.
* On a personal note I found it stressful enough doing my job investigating crime whilst being aware of the possible consequences of an error. Doing it under the shadow of a possible capital offence would have been impossible.
So, to deal with the risk of the jury being squeamish: Separate the jury from the sentencing.
I know in the UK that someone convicted of a crime can be called back to be sentenced separately: It doesn't happen as part of the trial. So have a council of judges determine the sentence if it's a more serious case with serious consequences, and don't have the jury involved or even present for that.
That layer of isolation should help mitigate the risk of a member of the jury get fixated on the potential outcome rather than on the trial itself.
And sympathies regarding the job: It's not something many of us think about, nor would want to do, so... thanks.
That won't fix that problem. The jury doesn't have to decide the sentence for them to know the possible sentence. The defense attorney can easily make this point and usually do anyway:
"Do you really think that [x] deserves to die for [gross understatement of the actions]?"
That puts the thought in the minds of the jurors: "if you say guilty here, the judges might decide to kill them".
So even without considering the other problems the concept has, your separation won't prevent some jurors from possibly considering an acquittal to avoid it.
they're responsible for the deaths
Not really. People end up using opiates because healthcare system and pharmaceutical companies failed them. When a doctor decides to stop their opiate pain killers, because that's the virtue signalling trend in their area.
patient> okay doc, I'll just bite my lip and carry on with this pain that will never fully go away.
doctor> Thank you for understanding, we have a talking therapy for you so that will teach you to ignore that you are in pain and if it doesn't work? Oh well, this means you won't be trying hard enough to ignore your pain.
patient> No doctor, I trust you.
* 7 days later after some tapering *
* patient is in agony *
patient> *calls doctor* Hey doctor, how are you? You know I can't ignore the pain, it hurts so badly I need those opiates. I have just few tablets left.
doctor> You need to try harder to ignore the pain. Trust me. Opiates are not good for you. You'll have talking therapy in six months. Hang in there soldier.
patient> But it hurts.
doctor> That's the way life is. Call me in a week. I gotta go.
* 1 day later *
patient> *calls doctor* I can't stand the pain. Please prescribe me my tablets.
doctor> Don't talk to me like that. You are just having withdrawals. Try to ignore the pain as I told you. It's all in your head.
patient> It's not in my head I can feel it. It just won't go away and it's stronger and stronger. Please doctor.
doctor> You start to talk like a drug addict. Trust me, you need to just ignore it. I gotta go.
* 5 days later *
patient> *calls doctor* I am dying of pain!!!
doctor> Have you tried to ignore the pain?
* 2 days later *
patient> *calls nephew* Do you know *aaarghhh* someone who could get me pain killers?
nephew> Sure thing. I'll pass your number on.
dealer> What you want?
patient> *says what they prescribed*
dealer> I got something better. Where are you?
patient> *says address* Please hurry up!
*10 minutes later*
*dealer knocks*
patient> You are a life saver!
dealer> There you go. *collects money*
*patient takes tablets*
*3 months later*
patient no longer has money for tablets and moves on heroin.
patient buys a dose from a bad batch, dies.
Are dealers bad? They just fill the gap where health services failed. The fact the drugs are illegal to sell and are unregulated, creates a situation where bad batches happen.
In terms of the pain relief it offers when taken at the recommended dose (which the drug companies know that nobody in pain is going to follow). Like all opioids you can just keep taking more to get more and more pain relief. And it has all the downsides of stronger opioids like morphine.
Opioids bind to opioid receptors activating them, this inhibits the process that makes the cAMP messenger molecule.
Long term use of opioids results in reduced expression of the gene for opioids receptors, resulting in a lower number of receptors on the surface of cells. This not only reduces the pain relief effect that opioids provide but also that of your body's own pain regulation.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2597555/
I assume you didn't read what you posted here, otherwise you wouldn't post it.
For people who want to read it - the mice were injected a close to lethal dose of fentanyl every day and if they reduced the dosing there was no problem.
One of those studies that would give people water at close to lethal dose and then conclude water is harmful.
Pecunia non olet, as some $cientists say.
Let's not forget the Rat Universe experiments. Even "highly addictive" drugs turned out to be fairly easily kicked in a supportive environment
Rats are highly social creatures. Isolating them in cages turns out to be torture. No wonder they prefer the opioids in that environment
Taking too much opium is bad for you, drinking too much alcohol is pretty much the same level of death too - and don't swallow a bottle full of Aspirins unless you want to die. But Aspirins are legal. I would not ban all of these drugs, simply helping everyone learn what's good, what's not good and what's risky would solve all issues. I don't see drugs as a problem, all the problems are just created by our stupid laws.
We haven't been told how this double-criminal — one who breaks the law and also cheats his customers — was identified. Presumably, there was painstaking detection involving a degree of traditional 'feet on the street' police work.
One assumes dark networks, these used with a modicum of sense, can be safe places for expressing dissident opinion and for sharing digital artefacts. However, when money changes hands and/or physical goods require delivery, bets on safety are off. Cryptocurrencies, e.g. Bitcoin, are not wholly anonymous because transactions can be tracked and related to points of linkage to conventional banking services. Similarly, collection or delivery of illicit physical goods entails risk regardless of whether a legitimate postal service is used.
Tor, when the chosen intermediary technology, may be less secure than some other options. This because Tor depends upon conventional Internet connections to servers, albeit a short chain thereof passing onwards encrypted traffic. Within the digital realm, peer to peer systems with distributed storage (e.g. Freenet), are much harder than Tor to track foci of illicit activity; however, seemingly, only Tor offers rapid interaction between a vendor and a customer in a manner resembling that of the open Internet.
Another factor is the susceptibility of Tor to users' identities being revealed via patient monitoring of activity on 'false flag' sites. Browser fingerprints, plus additional information gleaned from text, can be stored in massive databases, such as within the capacity of the NSA, GCHQ, and similar others, to process (these perhaps deploying so-called 'AI'). Similar information can be collected from ordinary Internet users and linked to ISP addresses.
Despite carrying considerably greater ambiguity of identity than current police services' ordinary fingerprint and DNA data stores, digital fingerprints could be helpful in raising suspicion of other criminality by people under enquiry for something else. Bear in mind that encryption of traffic (on Tor and/ or using a VPN) does not obscure fingerprint identity. Digital fingerprints can be obfuscated but, as with other means of maximising privacy, would not be a widespread practice. Notably, this method for keeping a wary eye open for patterns of unlawful activity cannot apply to encrypted darknets with distributed data storage.
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