Police are being urged to crack down
Heroin, cocaine, cannabis and crystal meth are all being offered for sale on social media sites across Wales and the UK, we can reveal.
A search in the Wales section of Craigslist uncovered 100 links to pages offering illegal narcotics.
Many offered prescription pills, as well as banned substances.
It is unclear if all the offers of drugs are genuine or attempts to scam unwary people.
One Cardiff-based dealer going under the name of “Bestpushers” boasted a shopping list of dope that included Xanax, LSD, cocaine, Ecstasy, crystal meth, heroin and ketamine.
The seller urged users to get in touch, saying: “If you are suffering from health problem. Then you are at the right health centre at the right time.
“Tell your doctor your problem and get solution.”
A seller in the Valleys offering “drugs for sales” wrote: “Any local teens etc whatever get in touch have good weed and fair prices.”
In Swansea a peddler dubbed “cashondelivery” was offering “speed, gear, charlie, ice, kush, weed, marijuana, coke, bud, 420, shard, LSD”.
Kush is a strain of cannabis, while shard is crystal meth. The term 420 is slang for cannabis.
Our investigation also uncovered dealers operating on Facebook and Twitter.
Other sites around the world are happy to ship to the UK.
New York-based Facebook page “Medical Marijuana and Cannabis Oil for Sale” boasted “top grade medical marijuana” that it was happy to ship to the UK.
“All orders are shipped from our main branch in the US using either DHL, Fedex, UPS, USPS and EMS depending on buyers location around the globe,” the page said.
A UK-based Facebook page called “Diazepam Sales” offered sleeping pills, cannabis, cocaine and viagra.
“Contact for more info and price,” it said.
On Twitter @budsoasis was flogging “cannabis, weed, oil, THC, CBD, wax, edibles, concentrates”.
Meanwhile @goldmedications tweeted: “Buy crack cocaine online.”
Websites were also operating selling drugs away from social media, including The Cannabis Online Dispensary and buyheroinonline.com.
Drug dealers are widely known for operating on the dark net, where it is easy for them to operate anonymously.
But all of these dealers were operating on the clearnet – the web everyday users are familiar with.
Andrew Williams, of the UK Safer Internet Centre, said: “The minute you step into that space you’re in a vulnerable place because you’re doing something illegal.
“But I’m not surprised they are there.”
He said what was noticeable was “the brazenness of it” and “how open these sellers are about what they are doing and how to get hold of it”.
Mr Williams said parents should ensure they know what their kids were looking at online.
“You need to be involved in your child’s online life and be appropriately inquisitive with your child so you can gain an understanding of what they are doing and take the right steps to protect them.
“We encourage them to be open and trusting and transparent and not to overreact and to keep lines of communication open with them.”
Martin Blakebrough, of drug charity Kaleidoscope, was shocked dealers had shifted from the dark net.
“This shows you that the Government is not on top of it,” he said.
“I wonder what the intelligence services are doing if it is so prevalent that you can just find it on the normal net?
"We have seen these big raids in Gwent where the police are going in mob-handed, but then you’ve got people openly selling stuff online, it seems bizarre.
“Surely they should just be calling the numbers online?”
It was “a demonstration that the system does not work”.
“In terms of quality control you’ve no idea what you’re buying from the net,” Mr Blakebrough said.
He said if “you can’t police it then you need to control it” another way.
“If you really wanted to crack down on it you could have sniffer dogs in every sorting office,” he said.
“That is the only way you can crack down on it.”
On Craigslist most sellers told people to get in touch using encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp.
“If they are confident that the police cannot track them over the systems they are using then a dealer’s customer base is going to be wider on the normal internet,” Mr Blakebrough said.
Monmouth MP David Davies was “very surprised” people were selling drugs openly online.
“It’s something the authorities should look into,” he said. “It’s particularly worrying that this has come to light in the same week a nurse died after snorting cocaine that had been mixed with horse tranquilliser.
“People do not know what they are buying at all. People selling drugs are looking to make as much money as possible and are not going to be too worried about health and safety.
"People could be injecting or snorting or smoking all sorts of things.”
Twitter insisted it did not comment on individual cases but said: “Twitter prohibits the promotion of drugs and drug paraphernalia globally.”
Facebook declined to comment but removed the pages drawn to their attention by WalesOnline.
Craigslist had not commented at the time of writing, nor had South Wales Police.
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/illegal-drugs-being-sold-openly-12603236
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