By Jakob Demant, Kristoffer Magnus Bjerre Aagesen

This study investigated the current state of social media drug dealing. The main objective was to understand how contemporary hybrid digital social media markets have evolved since previous research was undertaken in 2017-18. This was achieved by conducting netnography in online spaces, with a particular focus on Danish sites. The netnography data collection in Denmark has since been rolled out in Norway, Sweden and Germany. The most significant findings are as follows.

• Our netnography found no access to drug dealing in Danish spaces through searching on the Meta platforms, Facebook and Instagram. Although there may be some limited groups on Facebook, the findings suggest that there has been a successful implementation of increased moderation protocols on both Instagram and Facebook.

• On Snapchat, we identified easy and quick access to many active drug dealers in all major Danish cities. These dealers were identified by searching for common Danish drug slang in the search field and through suggestions from the app’s network-expanding features. We found similar ready access to drug dealers in Norway and Sweden. However, we did not identify drug dealer activity on the German Snapchat.

• We also found a vast amount of Danish and Swedish drug dealing on forums in the social networking site Reddit. Here, dealers created and moderated forums dedicated to selling drugs. The forums functioned as open markets with high levels of competition and a degree of specialisation in offering all types of drugs. No Norwegian and German dealers was found on these sites.

In summary, we identified easily accessible drug dealing on surface-level social media amounting to a large potential drift among social media users. Snapchat and Reddit each host active digital drug markets well suited to taking advantage of the platforms’ features while avoiding effective moderation. It was not possible to reach either platform to inform them

Lisbon:  European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) , 2022. 29p.

By James Hawdon· Katalin Parti  Thomas Dearden

This research uses longitudinal data to investigate if illegal online drug purchases changed over time during the COVID-19 pandemic, and if these changes were primarily driven by users adjusting to market conditions or by a heightened level of pandemic-induced strain that could drive a greater demand for drugs. Data were collected across four waves between fall 2019 and fall 2021 using an online survey. Data showed an increase in reported online drug purchases across the waves, but the online drug purchases remained consistent for the frst year of the pandemic, but increased by approximately 44% between the fall 2020 and fall 2021 when over 13 percent of the sample admitted to buying illegal drugs online. Strain was also related to buying illegal drugs online as those respondents who made illegal online purchased had an average of 5.2 strain events in the past 12 months compared to only 2.4 events among those who did not report purchasing illegal drugs online. However, the infuence of strain on online purchases remained consistent across time. These results suggest that the increase in online drug purchases was primarily driven by users adapting to changing market conditions rather than the cumulative strains associated with the pandemic producing a greater effect on purchases. Policy implications are also discussed.

  American Journal of Criminal Justice (2022) 47:712–734