It’s all good to talk up the benefits of eating vegan and buying local, but if you’re hoovering up cocaine on the weekends, your hands are dirty.

Dubbed the ‘great Millennial cocaine contradiction’, which we covered last year, it hasn’t gone unnoticed by those who peddle those wares, leading to a rather odd marketing strategy over on the dark web.

According to the Telegraph, a whole host of “vegan” and “ethically friendly” products are now popping up, in order to appeal to the ethics of the Millennial drug user:

Numerous dealers selling to the UK on encrypted online drug sites are marketing their wares to eco-conscious buyers as from “sustainable” and “organic” sources.

The discovery, made during a Telegraph investigation, comes after Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, criticised “middle class” drug users who worry about “global warming and organic food” but fail to see the harm and violence caused.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) rejected claims that drugs were being “ethically sourced” as little more than a scam to charge higher prices.

A spokesman said: “The ‘ethical’ claims are unlikely to be much more than a marketing ploy to entice new trade and charge a premium price.

Sheesh, if you can’t trust a dark web drug dealer, who can you trust?

Let’s enjoy a few more attempts at appeasing the Millennial drug user’s conscience:

Among the adverts seen by the Telegraph were for “organic vegan” LSD, with the dealer promining “no animals were mistreated or used during the manufacturing process”.

Other drugs available under the vegan banner included ‘vegan and paleo matcha mint choc chip’ cannabis cookies, selling at £15 for a batch of three.

Dealers were seen advertising “ethically sourced” mephedrone, a stimulant linked to amphetamines also known as ‘meow meow’, and the highly potent hallucinogen DMT “harvested from sustainable farms” in Brazil.

Take a stand, Millennials – no longer will we sit by whilst our ‘meow meow’ is made sans ethics!

Everyone is looking for a competitive advantage, and this marketing ploy is one such way:

Jack Cunliffe, a lecturer in criminology at the University of Kent who has studied the online drugs trade, said the dark web was difficult place for new dealers to break into as 95 percent of the transactions are made by less than five percent of the vendors…

“In that type of field people are doing to do anything to try and get a competitive advantage and part of that may be appealing to the sensibilities of the purchasers,” said Mr Cunliffe.

“Lots of drug-buyers, especially from these sources, are the people that want to do it occasionally at a weekend or now and again for a special occasion – the kind of middle-class university graduates.

“We don’t know if these products are coming from a more ethical source, but people are going to say that to get an advantage in a competitive market place.”

I guess it’s a case of whatever makes the end user feel better about themselves, although if you’re buying drugs off the dark web, you may have already compromised on a few points.

You do you out there, but if you’re going to lecture your friends about their meat-eating, or their purchasing of products that contain palm oil, then consider what goes into producing that weekend party powder en route to your back pocket.

[source:telegraph]