Sellers of illegal drugs like GHB are finding a brand-new marketplace on the street corners of the information superhighway.

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GHB is far from the only illicit drug being sold on the Internet. In March of last year, Keith Hellawell, Britain's anti-drugs minister, reported that there were approximately 1,100 websites around the world selling illegal drugs ranging from marijuana to heroin.

But it's not only the stereotypical street dealers who are looking to muscle in on the new territory the Internet provides. As with any other niche market on the Web, a number of entrepreneurs hope to take advantage of the popularity of drugs with the wired generation.

One of the most publicized and ambitious of these companies is iToke, an Amsterdam-based business that plans to offer customers around the world the chance to purchase marijuana online. Customers who place orders on the iToke website would have their pot delivered via bicycle messenger. And just like with pizza, if the drugs don't arrive within 30 minutes, they're free.

"At the end of the day, who do you want to buy from?" asked Mike Tucker, one of iToke's founders, in an early press release. "Some guy in an alley in Barcelona or from a company that not only delivers premium products but also shows an interest in the community and its employees."

Tucker, who started the company along with fellow American Tim Freccia, is so intent on lending the business of online marijuana sales respectability that the two men reportedly designed the iToke site to look like a cross between the commercial websites for Apple Computer and Starbucks.

"We wanted to set up a business that our contemporaries would respond to -- the Generation X or Slacker generation who all of a sudden have found themselves in the forefront of the new economy," Freccia said in an interview last year with the UK's Independent. "We realized the people we grew up with are probably now Seattle tech workers pulling in a joint salary of around a quarter of a million dollars. They've got houses and kids, but they still smoke pot in the basement."

But the brick-and-mortar marijuana retailers in Amsterdam are not yet willing to accept their new business rival. Originally scheduled to begin delivery service in September 2000, iToke has delayed its launch due to resistance from Amsterdam's coffee shop owners, who currently maintain somewhat of a monopoly on legal marijuana sales in that city. As a result, the iToke website currently sells only T-shirts, polos, and oxfords emblazoned with the iToke logo on the front and the label "User" on the back.

The site has met with considerable success, though, despite the fact that it hasn't yet sold a single ounce of pot. It received approximately 100 million visitors in its first six months online and continues to attract around 30,000 visitors each day.

And iToke isn't the first website to try to break into the marketplace. As early as March 1996, another Amsterdam-based website, known as Neuroroom, began selling marijuana, hashish, and ecstasy to customers in 15 countries, including the United States. The drugs would be sent via snail mail to customers who made "donations" to the site. Sellers claimed to have a 90 percent success rate sending small amounts of drugs through the mail until Dutch police shut down the site in 1997.

Another site, Dutchjoints.com, stopped offering marijuana deliveries when it became so popular that its operator, a 41-year-old Dutch limousine driver, began to fear police intervention. He still offers the service, but only to previous customers. And the eBay of e-drugs -- PotPrice.com -- serves as a message board where marijuana sellers can advertise their products and hook up with buyers, even though the site claims to be for entertainment purposes only.

Porrata said drug laws need to be enforced online as well as off.

"The two big needs in this area are training for law enforcement regarding cybercrimes investigation techniques and training for prosecution," she said. "Many agencies, especially state or local, don't have the manpower to allow time for such cases. The Feds have shown limited interest."

Despite whatever interest law enforcement shows in stopping online drug sales, however limited, police will have to face a growing number of wired dealers who can operate with a certain degree of anonymity and from outside the United States. Porrata said these qualities of the Internet allow dealers to be especially aggressive.

"I was really annoyed when a Chinese chemical supplier of some sort got onto our message board for GHB addicts who are trying to get and stay clean," she said, "advertising to buy GHB from them."

This article was first published on October 9, 2001 and is based on original reporting by "CyberCrime" segment producer Jon Taylor.


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