Dealers had 48 hours to remove the listings. The community’s reaction to the ban was controversial.

Many people imagine the darknet as an entirely uncontrolled area. This stereotype has little in common with reality. Market owners go to great lengths to make the dark web a safer and more transparent place. They do it because this raises their brand awareness and people start to trust them more. This is just one example of what the darknet can do to self-regulate.

Deathly Fentanyl Banned from Sale

According to the information provided by Deep Dot Web, one dark web marketplace banned sales of fentanyl. This powerful drug has caused a wave of deaths, so the community decided to take measures to prevent further fatalities.

The administrator of the Darknet Heroes League (DHL) marketplace shared an announcement saying that neither fentanyl nor its analogs will be available on sale. They emphasized that the market made this step to protect its customers’ lives and wellbeing.

The Darknet Heroes League gave all vendors who offered fentanyl 48 hours to remove this product from their listings. Those who disobeyed or were too slow to respond would lose their ability to vend. The marketplace expressed its gratitude to its audience and apologized for the inconvenience.

The administration was satisfied with the vendors’ reaction. A representative of the DHL team, who goes by the moniker “SeriousSam”, said that fentanyl was not present on the marketplace anymore — at least to their knowledge.

The Hazards of Fentanyl

This is a synthetic opioid much more powerful than morphine. It will hardly kill a person if they consciously consume it in small doses. Most fatalities happen for the following two reasons.

• Dealers sell fentanyl saying that this is some other substance
• The customer exceeds the reasonable dosage

Only in late 2013 and 2014, the drug allegedly caused over 700 fatal overdoses. This information comes from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Many more people have passed away because of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids since then.

Once, Connecticut authorities seized 2.5 kg of fentanyl. It was manufactured in China and then distributed internationally. VICE News calculated that one well-known dark web dealer had made a minimum of $500,000 from that drug alone.

One of the biggest and the most popular darknet markets is AlphaBay. There, consumers can discover plenty of fentanyl listings. Some orders come with a pleasant “bonus”: the vendor adds extra 50 milligrams with every purchase.

Consumers’ Reaction to the Fentanyl Ban

People’s opinions were split about this DHS decision. Some genuinely welcomed this news. Others were straightforwardly skeptical about the efficiency of the ban.

Users said that banning pure fentanyl did not make sense. First, it is often mislabeled and sold as heroin or some other opiates. Second, many vendors cut other opioids with small amounts of fentanyl, which makes them more powerful and more dangerous.

The fentanyl ban at the Darknet Heroes League was not the first case when a market prohibited selling a certain product. Many bans are connected with selling firearms. Plus, some markets specialize only in particular listings, such as cannabis.