The listings on sites like the Silk Road suggest that to a large extent, these websites are taking on a role similar to the “multi-commodity drug broker.” On these sites, retail buyers, as well as dealers, can find almost any type of drug known to users and buy such drugs in fairly large quantities. This is problematic for the police, because the nature of the online trade means that there is no single central “node”: thousands of buyers and sellers are able to interact in an open market, and taking one dealer, or even a dozen, out of business, will not make much of an impact on the supply
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