About this ebook
The very first thing ever bought or sold on the Internet was marijuana, when Stanford and MIT students used ARPANET to cut a deal in the early '70s. Today, you can order any conceivable pill or powder with the click of a mouse. In Drugs Unlimited, Mike Power tells the tale of drugs in the Internet Age, in which users have outmaneuvered law enforcement, breached international borders, and created a massive worldwide black market.
But the online market in narcotics isn't just changing the way drugs are bought and sold; it's changing the nature of drugs themselves. Enterprising dealers are using the Web to engage highly skilled foreign chemists to tweak the chemical structures of banned drugs—just enough to create a similar effect and just enough to render them legal in most parts of the world. Drugs are marketed as "not for human consumption," but everyone knows exactly how they're going to be used—what they can't know is whether their use might prove fatal.
From dancefloors to the offices of apathetic government officials, via social networking sites and underground labs, Power explores this agile, international, virtual subculture that will always be one step ahead of the law.
But the online market in narcotics isn't just changing the way drugs are bought and sold; it's changing the nature of drugs themselves. Enterprising dealers are using the Web to engage highly skilled foreign chemists to tweak the chemical structures of banned drugs—just enough to create a similar effect and just enough to render them legal in most parts of the world. Drugs are marketed as "not for human consumption," but everyone knows exactly how they're going to be used—what they can't know is whether their use might prove fatal.
From dancefloors to the offices of apathetic government officials, via social networking sites and underground labs, Power explores this agile, international, virtual subculture that will always be one step ahead of the law.
About the author
Mike Power is a freelance investigative journalist living in London. He has worked for The Guardian, the Mail on Sunday, the BBC, and Reuters. In 2014 he received the Best Investigative Journalism Award, awarded by the Association of British Science Writers, for his piece "The drug revolution that no one can stop," which appeared in the online journal Matter. Drugs Unlimited is his first book.
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