An insight into the deep web; why it matters for addiction psychiatry?

ABSTRACT Objective. Nowadays, the web is rapidly spreading, playing a significant role in the marketing/sale/distribution of ‘quasi’ legal drugs, hence facilitating continuous changes in drug scenarios. The easily renewable and anarchic online drug-market is gradually transforming indeed the drug-market itself, from a ‘street’ to a ‘virtual’ one, with customers being able to shop with a relative anonymity in a 24-hour marketplace. The hidden ‘deep web’ is facilitating this phenomenon. The paper aims at providing an overview to Mental Health’s and Addiction’s professionals on current knowledge about pro-drug activities on the deep web. Methods: A non-participant netnographic qualitative study of a list of pro-drug websites (blogs, fora, drug marketplaces) located into the surface web, was here carried out. A systematic Internet search was conducted on Duckduckgo® and Google® whilst including the following keywords: “drugs”/“legal highs”/“Novel Psychoactive Substances”/“NPS” combined with the word “deep web”. Results: Four themes (e.g. ‘How to access into the deepweb’; ‘Darknet and the online drug trading sites’; ‘Grams-search engine for the deep web’; and, ‘Cryptocurrencies’) and 14 categories were here generated and properly discussed. Conclusions: The present paper represents a complete/systematical guideline about the deep web, specifically focusing on practical information on online drug marketplaces, useful for Addiction’s professionals.