“Today, we face new and increasingly dangerous threats as drug dealers expand into the digital world and use the darknet to sell dangerous drugs such as fentanyl and methamphetamine,” said Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Anne Milgram. “These drug traffickers are flooding the United States with deadly and counterfeit pills, fueling the overdose crisis in the United States, fomenting violence, and threatening the safety and health of American communities. The DEA`s message is clear today: criminal drug networks operating on the darknet and trying to hide from law enforcement can no longer hide. The DEA, the U.S. interagency and our valued international partners are committed to dismantling drug networks wherever they are, including on the darknet. The Dole-Nyswander model quickly evolved to another stage due to regulatory conditions imposed by the Food and Drug Administration at the request of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. These regulations, which were “interpreted” by the state inspectors who enforced them, reflected major concerns about the diversion of methadone from the strictly monitored pharmaceutical administration to street drug markets. While these concerns are well-founded, the possibility of such diversion was viewed with little concern by some clinicians, who viewed diverted and street-bought methadone as a less hazardous substance than injectable heroin and viewed the street-based methadone market as a possible step toward clinic admission. The regulation also included prejudices against indefinite maintenance, against low doses (of controversial efficacy) and against certain therapeutic rigidities, including specific personnel and plant parameters. Although its origins lie in the public sector, the chemical dependence modality is now more widely provided by private for-profit and not-for-profit hospitals and rehabilitation facilities, which derive most of their income from liability insurance payments. The typical client in this system is not the convicted criminal or sometimes the worker typically found in the public system, whose drug use often involves a combination of heroin, cocaine and amphetamines, as well as heavy alcohol consumption. Instead, the typical customer here is constantly busy, often an employee who abuses or is addicted to cocaine and alcohol.
Alternatively, he or she may be a marijuana-addicted middle-class teen who fails in school and is eventually sent for treatment by concerned parents. A third core customer is the counterpart to the middle-class neurasthenia of yesteryear – an older, female, non-active user of tranquilizers, including barbiturates, tranquilizers and alcohol. The criminal law perspective focuses on reducing illegal behaviour – not only drug offences per se, but also related personal, property and public order offences. The collective counterpart of the effects of individual treatment would be a reduction in overall rates of criminal victimization, prosecution and incarceration. Operation Dark HunTor resulted in the seizure of more than $31.6 million in cash and virtual currencies; approximately 234 kg of drugs worldwide, including 152.1 kg of amphetamine, 21.6 kg of cocaine, 26.9 kg of opioids, 32.5 kg of MDMA, in addition to more than 200,000 tablets of ecstasy, fentanyl, oxycodone, hydrocodone and methamphetamine and counterfeit medicines; and 45 firearms. Darknet vendor accounts have also been identified and assigned to real people selling illegal products on active marketplaces as well as inactive darknet marketplaces such as Dream, WallStreet, White House, DeepSea, and Dark Market. In deciding which list a drug or other substance should be included in, or whether a substance should be controlled or reclassified, certain factors must be taken into account. These factors are listed in Section 201(c), [21 U.S.C. § 811(c)] of the CSA as follows: Drug policy is no exception to the rule of simple ideas. For much of this century, drug policy has been and continues to be profoundly influenced by conventional wisdom.
Particularly influential was the belief that drug problems are due to morally compromised or pathological individuals who were not properly acquainted with normal American values such as self-control and respect for the law in childhood. These people must be punished and punished by the authorities to prevent them from engaging in inherently dangerous and addictive drugs (for pleasure or profit). The power of such ideas is evident in the fact that they are widely treated as obvious facts that any well-meaning and intelligent participant in drug policy design signs or takes very seriously.