EMCDDA special report: COVID-19 and drugs – Drug supply via darknet markets

This report is a rapid and preliminary analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on selected online markets. Three relatively large darknet markets were reviewed for the purposes of this study, selected because of their importance to the EU market and because they could be accessed to provide information necessary to comment on activity levels. A limitation of this study is that not all major darknet markets could be included at the time of drafting (April 2020). Qualitative information from a number of online forums was also analysed to further inform the analysis provided here. The conclusions made are therefore necessarily tentative and only provide a snapshot, as the situation is evolving rapidly.