The success rate of online illicit drug transactions during a global pandemic

In the months following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA; 2020) observed an increased use of cryptomarkets, which led them to question whether cryptomarkets constituted a more convenient channel via which to distribute illicit drugs without any in-person contact
Cryptomarkets, which are a subset of illicit drug trafficking channels on the darkweb, are platforms that operate in many cases under an almost identical model to eBay (Barratt, 2012)
Deliveries of illicit drug packages are very much embedded in the physical world, insofar as cryptomarket vendors must mail their illicit drugs to their customers, which means that they encounter the same delays and issues that plague all mail packages (Volery, 2015)
In the months that followed the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the EMCDDA (2020) observed an increased use of cryptomarkets, which led them to question whether cryptomarkets represented a more convenient channel through which to distribute illicit drugs, due to the fact that no in-person contact was required
We do not claim that our data allows us to precisely predict how cryptomarket participants adapt during crises such as a pandemic; rather, it helps us to understand both how illicit markets cope with external stresses, and whether these can impact upon illicit markets that are harder to capture than looking at the number of participants, volume of sales, or the price of illicit drugs
The number of unsuccessful transactions increased concurrently with the global spread of the pandemic. Both the international and inter-continental nature of the transactions and the severity of the crisis in the vendor’s country are significantly associated with delivery failure
This study is unable to determine the causes of this impact, it does lead to two opposing hypotheses pertaining to whether the apparent increase in unsuccessful transactions is due to either the inability of drug dealers to deliver on past promises that were made in good faith, or the opportunistic and abusive behaviour of drug dealers who are taking advantage of the pandemic to steal from their customers