breathtaking rate, say experts conducting groundbreaking research into
online drug sales.
The drugs can be toxic tothe brain and are often untested on humans,
and unsuspecting users are buying them without knowing what they
contain or what effect they will have.
About four new chemicalsubstances, and 10 retail outlets selling them
to Australians, are emerging each month, Tasmanian researchers have
found.
And research by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre has
found that the "silk road", an online black-market trading site, is
expanding at a similar rate.
A senior lecturer at the University of Tasmania, Raimondo Bruno, said
the size of the online drugs market, and the risks posed by the
drugs,scared him.
"People are dabbling in a wide range of substances we don't really
have a lot of human data on," he said."Some of these products are
known to be neurotoxic, even in animals."
Dr Bruno said there appeared to be two types of sales: specific
chemicals, for which more than 78,000 searches originate in Australia
each month, and "blended" drugs, forwhich about 18,500 searches are
made.
He said the blended drugs, sold under generic brand names, were
particularly unpredictable. "Almost all the drugs we're talking about
haven't had any history of human testing - a coupleare failed
antidepressants or otherdrugs," he said. "
Because the blends don'tstate the content, or they state misleading
content, you can buy something one week and go back to the same seller
and buy the same brand and it can be different."
Dr Bruno will present hisresearch at the Australasian
ProfessionalSociety on Alcohol and other Drugs Conference in Melbourne
on Wednesday.
The executive director ofthe Australian National Council on Drugs,
Gino Vumbaca, said the new drugs posed a significant risk,
particularly as long-termhealth outcomes were unknown.
"A lot of these drugs are marketed as a legal alternative, and people
think they're legal and that there's less risk," he said. "They assume
it's gone through some kindof pharmaceutical procedure."
He said research indicated most of the new compounds were coming from
China and India, and retailers knewif someone was hurt by their
products there were plenty more users to take their place.
A researcher at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the
University of NSW, Joe Van Buskirk, who is also presenting at the
conference, said he had found an average of about 15 new sellers a
fortnight on the silk road willing to ship drugs to Australia.
The silk road exists on what is known as the ''dark'' or ''hidden''
web,operating on a membership basis and using an alternative currency.
"In order to sell anything, or even buy anything, you have to gain the
trust of the forums beforehand,'' Mr Van Buskirk said.
International and domestic sellers sold there, although international
sellers offered cheaper prices.
He said the drugs sold tended to be older drugssuch as cannabis, which
he was surprised to find was the most common product.
Figures from the Australian Customs and Boarder Protection Service
show cannabis isthe second most common drug caught in cargo and postal
importation, with the number of captures increasing by 86 per cent in
the past three years.
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