OK, to clarify, it's a few websites, and before too long, it will be many websites. You see, there is a side to the internet that most people don't know about, although it is rapidly gaining in popularity. It is known as the Deep Web, and sometimes, the Dark Net. Recently, you may have heard of the closure of a site known as The Silk Road. It was an online drug marketplace where anonymous shoppers could seek out and purchase any illegal drug one wished to procure.
The Silk Road was in the news recently because it was shut down by the FBI. Since the emergence of the site, law enforcement officials had struggled to figure out how to expose the identities of those behind it, let alone figure out a way to stop it. In the end, it came down to great police work. The man behind the site made a stupid mistake and got caught.
But by no means is his arrest an end to the saga of anonymous online drug sites. In fact, there are at least three sites that we are aware of that offer the same services as The Silk Road. We don't want to offer them the free publicity, so we won't mention their names.
In actual fact, though, even if we did say the names, most parents would have no idea how to find them. That's because they use an alternate way of browsing the internet, an anonymous browser known as TOR, which gives users access to an encrypted segment of the internet where almost anything you want can be purchased, including any drug you can think of, highly dangerous illegal weapons (including tanks, grenades, machine guns and more), and alledgedly, hitmen.
The Closure of The Silk Road Has Made the Deep Web Even More Dangerous
These sites will take the lessons learned from the bust of The Silk Road and use them to make their own sites even more impenetrable.
The fact is that the world is a different place now. Anyone who wants to find something badly enough, has a place that they know they can find it now. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.
That is why it is even more important now than ever for parents to know what is up with their kids. You have to be able to talk to your teenaged and young adult children about what is going on in their lives. You have to know them well enough that you'd recognize a sudden change in behavior or demeanor. A sudden drop in grades means something. A new group of friends means something. In short, be on the lookout for sudden departures from the norm.
Parents have long been concerned about their kids using weed as a gateway drug, but the truth is that most kids, historically, wouldn't have known where to go to find harder drugs. At least not easily. But now, anyone who wants to, with even just the smallest bit of curiosity and a little bit of knowledge about the internet, can seek out any drug they want to try.