Will the Current COVID-19 Pandemic Impact on Long-term Cannabis Buying Practices?

: The COVID-19 pandemic and the response to have resulted in an increase in sales activity levels on darknet markets during the first 3 months of 2020, mainly related to cannabis products. One key question is whether more people will become used to this form of purchasing their drugs and will they continue with it post COVID-19 lockdown. As one-to-one encrypted communication services or social media apps are increasingly being used, monitoring and interdiction will become much more challenging.

The COVID-19 pandemic is impacting on all areas of life and for an agency responsible for monitoring drug markets in Europe two important questions are: is the current pandemic affecting the availability and use of drugs? And, if so, are any of the changes observed likely to have longer term ramifications? There are currently a number of exercises trying to rapidly understand the immediate impacts of the current situation, a necessary basis for consideration of the need for any immediate policy or operational responses. However, another key question is whether and how the current COVID-19 crisis might change future drug markets. While current COVID circumstances are obviously unique, parallels can be drawn with previous drug market disruptions. For example, the acute shortages of heroin in some European countries in 2001 and between the end of 2010 and early 2011 led to adaptions in some countries that have persisted over time – these include displacement of heroin with fentanyl in Estonia and with cathinones in Hungary.

Cannabis is the biggest sector of the EU drug market, estimated at retail level to be worth at least EUR 11.6 billion in 2017. Around one in seven young adults in the EU reports having used the drug in the past year, with prevalence rates showing signs of increase in some countries. Social distancing measures may be expected to disrupt established methods for drug supply and distribution. It would not be surprising if the shift we have seen in patterns of online purchasing for licit commodities might also be seen in respect to illicit commodities and that cannabis purchasing behaviour would see a similar shift towards online supply – utilizing darknet markets, social media and secure messaging apps.

Analysis of a major darknet cannabis market between January and March provides evidence that this may be happening. In the first three months of 2020, which saw the unfolding COVID pandemic, online cannabis sales increased by 27%. Surprisingly however, the estimates of revenue generated fell by 17% over this same period. On closer inspection, an increased number of sales of smaller quantities can be observed and a decreased proportion of larger quantity sales. This is unlikely to have been a supply issue as prices remained static for the lower quantity sales and reduced for the higher quantities. This could indicate that those purchasing from online markets for re-sale limited their activity – volume purchases. A possible explanation is those buying larger quantities for physical resale were withdrawing from the marketplace anticipating the impact of social distancing. The increase in smaller sales suggests that either existing online cannabis buyers were stocking up anticipating that supplies might become disrupted or that cannabis users who had not made online purchases before might have been experimenting with this option. This distinction is an important one as in the latter case the long-term impact of the current crisis could be more cannabis users becoming familiar with this way of accessing these drugs. We also suspect that, increasingly, once contact has been made on a darknet marketplace, a portion of the trade moves from there to one-to-one encrypted communication services or social media apps. If this is the case, for cannabis or other drug types, it will be extremely challenging to monitor or to interdict.

Our data is necessarily preliminary and only suggestive. However, the possibility that the current pandemic will have a profound impact on future drug purchasing behavior is an important one and will require appropriate follow-up by subsequent research studies.