Dark web drug dealers are choosing to ban deadly fentanyl, National Crime Agency says

Drug suppliers on the dark web have voluntarily began to ban the synthetic opioid fentanyl simply because they believe that it is too dangerous, the National Crime Agency (NCA) has said.

Major operators have stopped selling the high-strength painkiller because of the sheer quantity of fatalities which were linked to it, Vince O’Brien, one of many NCA’s leads on drugs, has claimed.

Fentanyl may be up to 100 times more powerful than heroin and can easily cause accidental overdoses.

It’s believed to possess killed around 160 people in the UK since it was introduced here from the US some 18 months ago.

Now Mr O’Brien said several dealing websites appeared to own “de-listed” the substance because selling a drug so commonly connected with fatalities was prone to see them investigated by police and law enforcement.

He told the Observer: “If they’ve got people selling very high-risk commodities then it’s going to improve the chance to them. You will find marketplaces that won’t accept listings for weapons and explosives – those are those that won’t accept listings for fentanyl. Clearly, police force would prioritise the method of getting weapons, explosives and fentanyl over, as an example, class C drugs – and that might well be why they do this.

“Additionally, there are drug users on the dark web who say on forums that they don’t really think it’s right that people are available fentanyl because it is dangerous and kills a lot of people.”

In the US, the substance has replaced heroin in lots of major drug markets, leading to a spike in overdose deaths: more than 29, 000 last year.