As an unofficial website to increase recreational drugs, advocates argue more information the better, but critics argue that it offers an easy temptation and a forum for dealers, writes Dan Stapleton.

Net-savvy generation of recreational drug users can now get high and outwit the police in mouse clicks.

It is possible on-line chats with almost every recreational drug. Net surfers can find out how to create illegal drugs from legal substances. They may build, find out what to do in case of overdose, a friend and read the experience of other drug users. Recreational drugs such as codeine, can be ordered from foreign countries and through networking in online communities can be taken in order to buy hard drugs himself.

Most nights, 16-year-old Katie * divides her time between homework and surfing the Internet. Last week we thought of trying the drug GHB for the first time, and thus examined liquid chemical (sometimes called Liquid E or fantasy), web site information about drugs.

Regularly check the latest news pill on-line forum and arranges drug – via on-line chat program – to buy marijuana from friends at school.

Katie finds the Internet invaluable for drug information. “It’s not like I spend all my time talking about drugs,” he says. “But when they need information, I know where to find it.”

She is one of thousands of Australians who visit the site of drug unofficial information, advice and friendship. Use of the Internet users of drugs worries some law enforcement authorities and health authorities. Although there are some benefits from the “user-to-user” web site, there are concerns about the quality of information they provide, “said Paul Dillon, spokesman for the National Drug and Alcohol Research Center at the University of NSW.

“I think it’s important for people to discuss anything forum, and drug use is included in it. There is a very well-intentioned people involved in these pages, but sometimes you just get really sick. Lots of advice that people take it as medical fact indeed very rare. do not know all the facts about drugs yet. ”

Websites are caught in the middle of the classic drug debate: minimizing harm than zero tolerance. But with an unmoderated medium, such as the Web, there is little the authorities can regulate the flow of information.

In 2002 a widely publicized Web site called Sniffer Dog Alert, which will inform drug users about how to avoid sniffer dogs hotspots e-mail or SMS, was closed NSW Police Minister, Michael Costa, after thousands signed up. Drug site lawyers responded with an intensive campaign seeks to ensure political support for user-to-drug users on the internet. One of the reasons why the unofficial site of drugs are more popular than the official web site as a place for federal Health Minister Tony Abbott and the NSW Department of Health, the official site have a forum for drug users to exchange information and experience.

Australian Drug Foundation’s website (www.adf.org.au) contains basic information about recreational drugs and offers academic resources relating to drug debate. Does not offer the experience of drug users.

Abbott this week said he did not know what any of the unofficial site said. “This interview is the first time I heard of them,” he said. “But all the sites promoting the use of drugs encourages its readers to dice with death. It’s incredibly irresponsible of them.”

Official end the publicly accessible website. “It is more than just a website on the Internet,” the former head of the Australian High Tech Crime Center, Alastair McGibbon said the Australasian Drug Strategy Conference in Alice Springs in May. E-mail, online chat programs, discussion groups, free Internet telephone services, and peer-to-peer “Internet technology” can also be used for those connecting buyers and sellers of illegal drugs, “said McGibbon.

There is an astonishing range of information about drugs on-line – and not just their ingredients and effects.

“In much the same way that governments and businesses are now questions the level and detailed information on their website, which can be exploited by terrorists, is on-line data that can assist those involved in illicit drugs: information from drugs ‘recipes’ after sailing dates and routes of ships which can carry illegal cargo on the ability to track packages sent via courier service, “said McGibbon.

“Information on the restricted precursor chemicals (and substitutes), is widely available, including the place where you can buy these chemicals. Information on the purchase of special laboratory equipment is also available.”

* Ben is a student at the University of Sydney. He is a frequent poster on the website about drugs, and uses the Internet to monitor new pills on the dance party-drug market. He is adamant about this web site are useful for drug users. “Of all the people I know who the most intelligent and rational drug of them are those who are involved in on-line drug community,” he says. “They know about minimizing the damage to avoid the pill.”

The information is “key to all harm reduction,” said John Davidson, who works for the site. “It’s only when people have all the facts that can make mature decisions – and the emphasis is ripe.”

Davidson believes that the proliferation of unofficial online resource of information on drugs is a response to the lack of direct-speaking information in mainstream media.

“The rise of the Internet came to the end of the 80s – a time Just Say No campaign. Ecstasy was used more and more people, and the gap between the reality of their lives and the media horror stories of trying to masquerade as truth, has led many to find their own answers.”

Unofficial website on drugs, which arose from the desire for non-biased information. “The old paradigm was top-down broadcast media, where the authoritarian government declaration on the ‘truth’ about drugs and the public would have no alternative source of information.”

Some websites and online forums go much further than providing information about drugs. In March, journalists from the Melbourne Sunday Age reported finding various recipes to GHB within minutes searching the web. In response to the report, Cameron Duff, director of research at the Center for Australian Drug Foundation for Youth Drug Studies, said earlier this year that it would be easy to make GHB using instructions obtained on the Internet. “I was told that anyone with basic chemistry university can make,” he said.

While most forums are specifically required to place any information about how to obtain illegal substances, it is easy to read between the lines.

Ben says: “When I first scored the acid through a member on-line forum. After a while it is easy to identify posters [Forum or members] who deal with too.”

Professor Enrico Coiera, University of NSW academic, which examines ways of providing online information for physicians and patients, “says the web plays an important role in disseminating information about recreational and pharmaceutical drugs.

“We know that people seek information from various sources, and that includes going to the site. The real question is: how will inform consumers about where to go and how to assess what they find?

“If you go on vacation, you can do your own research, go to the travel agency to discuss a free route. The same should apply to the use of drugs, whether pharmaceutical or recreational. My view is that [illegal drugs] are exactly what should you talk about the practitioner. ”

But Coiera message is one of caution. His sentiment reflects the concern that sections of the community have always been – that drugs are still widely discussed and distributed, it will be easier for users too far. For parents, the prospect is more appropriate to the rapidly decreasing age of computer literacy: many primary school children can use their computers better than their mothers and fathers.

“It is so much information on-line and it’s very hard to tell whether this is written by people with no bias, or people with light pressure,” says Coiera. “There is no way to tell if it’s a conflict of interest.”

Biased or not, Australia is facing a new paradigm – in terms of searching for information about recreational drugs, the method of choice is surfing the Internet. As consumers dissect these ever-growing source of information, so they become more know what you will get them high, and how to go about it. Whether it is a good thing remains to be seen.