I'm currently writing an essay on how 'moral panics' are created in our society. I am supposed to look at a specific 'moral panic,' historical or current, concerning drugs (e.g. the temperance movement in the early 1900s, the panic about crack in the 80s, the current "heroin epidemic" in vermont, etc.), and analyze the various sociological factors that contributed to that specific panic or why the panic failed. I've selected to look into the current 'panic' surrounding the rise of darknet drug markets, which seems to be evidenced by the massive amount of media coverage that has been devoted to 'dangerous' anonymous online drug markets in the past few years.
I have been doing a bit of research on the topic and am struggling to find any legitimate sources that have looked at the user makeup of buyers and sellers on darknet markets (i.e. socioeconomic status, race, whether vendors tend to be small-scale and private or connected with some sort of organization, etc.). Does anyone know of any legitimate research in this area that you could point me to?
If anyone is interested in what i'm trying to argue in the paper I'd be happy to go into some more detail, though I'm still only in the beginning stages.
I hope it's ok that I'm posting this here, I figured this subreddit would be my best bet for finding people who know about research that's been done on darknet markets.
Judging from the comments on this sub lately I'd say 50% underage white male