Indeed. Pretty much all of the ugly 'realities' of the drug trade are those which exist and thrive precisely because drugs are outlawed. SR happens to protect its users from having to deal with most of those realities - and that's a great benefit. DPR rightly deserves praise for helping people to get the drugs of their choice without having to hit the often dangerous streets for them.

Perhaps one day western societies will be able to have an adult conversation about drugs, but for the time being shrill reactionaries still set the tone. Meanwhile for every one dramatic walking-cliche of a drug casualty out there killing themselves and making the world shittier, there are at least a handful of responsible drug users conducting perfectly normal and successful lives. For any drug you can name.

If there's anyone being dramatic here it's the people who think anything that furthers their cause is good. In term of transparency SR is the opposite of legalization and will sooner or later be ruled by the ones who can produce the best product for the cheapest price at a high enough volume. And responsible drug use isn't a contradiction to "irresponsible drug manufacturing", so I don't get your point there.

Your point is pretty much impossible to discern as well. All I see in your post is slagging off DPR as a glorified drug trafficker, and some rather vague handwaving about the "realities of the drug trade".

"Irresponsible drug manufacturing"? If you're imagining that SR is a cesspool of tainted products, you could not be further from the reality of it. On SR, buying communities for specific drugs or drug subtypes tend to band together to discuss and assess vendors and their products quite publicly. In some cases, you see users subjecting vendors' products to lab tests (in countries where it's actually easy and legal to, god forbid, quantify the exact composition of illegal drugs). It's nowhere near as easy to get away with selling tainted garbage in this venue as it is on the street. There are typically far fewer unscrupulous operators standing between buyer and the actual supplier on SR, and consequently product quality is higher than most buyers likely have access to IRL.

> sooner or later be ruled by the ones who can produce the best product for the cheapest price at a high enough volume

..and? If the guy who can produce untainted, good-quality product at the cheapest price wins (which he won't, as there are any number of other factors that people involve in their buying decisions), then why would that be a problem?

I think it's fairly safe to assume that the drug trade didn't significantly change over night and that the sources of drugs are largely the same. Which means that a lot, especially of the harder drugs, come from south america. I'm obviously not going to go through the problems the drug trade causes in south america, as I assume this is public knowledge. Of course there is similar problems with manufacturing in the US.

Also I don't think its hand-waving when I base my opinions on the available information. I'm all ears if you can show that drug production has significantly changed (or at least what's is available on SR), that there's a significant overlap, and shift, between buying on SR and buying from street gangs and that this new distribution channel won't have largely the same victors, and therefor problems, as the rest of the drug trade.

Like I said, if someone comes up with a way to locally manufacture smaller amounts of drugs and give the control to the users, than you might have a theoretical case.

Last time I checked SR, if I remember correctly, there were substantial amounts of high-grade cocaine being sold from the south of the US.

The only way to actually check is to take delivery of it. Which I assume you didn't do.

There's lots of reasons to believe the Silk Road is real, but most of them are just assertions from mostly anonymous people.