Social Supply and the Potential for Harm Reduction in Social Media Drug Markets

Background Existing studies have highlighted the potential for increased drug market risks from buying drugs via social media involving strangers, such as receiving adulterated drugs or being robbed. However, social supply-driven social media drug markets may also offer enhanced social dealing and harm reduction opportunities. Aim To explore how social media platform features that enable expanded social networking may also support safer social drug dealing and other harm-reduction behaviors. Method Thematic analysis of anonymous online interviews with 33 people who buy and sell drugs via social media in New Zealand. Results Participants (median age 24; 22 male, 10 female, 1 gender diverse) accessing drugs via social media mostly utilized established social networks. These personal networks offered many benefits commonly associated with social media drug trading (i.e., safer and secure drug purchasing). Benefits included reducing the risk of receiving adulterated substances and being victimized. Social media affordances, which participants used to expand their everyday social networks, could also increase participants’ ability to leverage a broader social drug supply network and access related harm reduction benefits. Some participants used darknet markets to buy drugs, which they then resold to “friends” via social media platforms, facilitating supply channels that were largely “separated” from local physical drug markets and associated problems of fraud, violence, and organized crime. Conclusion Social media drug markets offer a range of harm reduction benefits that contribute to a lower-risk local drug market. We suggest this may reflect a closer alignment between social media platform affordances and their adaptation to social supply drug trading.