Drug Trends has identified, crawled (or ‘scraped’), extracted, categorised and analysed drug listings on cryptomarkets on a weekly basis since 1 February 2014. This bulletin series reports on trends in the availability and type of substances sold on the internet via cryptomarkets over the last 12 months (new bulletin released every four months). The current bulletin focuses on analysis of listings from 1 January 2019 to 31 January 2020.
An accompanying public online interactive data visualisation is available, allowing viewers to interact with data collected over the total monitoring period.
We have supplemented the data visualisations with:
- A Bulletin document outlining key findings from 1 January 2019 to 31 January 2020; and
- A Methods document outlining the background to this program of work and the methods underpinning data presented.
Key findings
- From 1 January 2019 to 31 January 2020, 13 cryptomarkets were monitored, and seven cryptomarkets closed down.
- Dream Market was responsible for 80% of drug listings each week until closure on the 30 April 2019.
- Cannabis, MDMA, cocaine, benzodiazepines and meth/amphetamine were the five drugs accounting for the greatest percentage of listings (64%).
- The market share of cannabis declined from 32% in January 2019 to 27% in January 2020.
Latest release date
April 2020
Use of the data
Please note that any presentation of these data should include acknowledgment of Drug Trends at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales.
Citation: Mathur, A., Man, N., Bruno, R., Barratt, M. J., & Peacock, A. (2020). Trends in the availability and type of drugs sold on the internet via cryptomarkets, January 2019 - January 2020. Drug Trends Bulletin Series. Sydney: National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW Sydney.
Queries
Contact us at drugtrends@unsw.edu.au with any queries.