Gold Coast Police investigating source of St Stephens overdose drugs on the ‘dark web’

SIX of the seven students who overdosed on drugs at Saint Stephens College this week have been released from hospital.

UPDATE: SIX of the seven students who overdosed on drugs at Saint Stephens College this week have been released from hospital.

The one remaining teen boy continues to recover at Gold Coast University Hospital.

EARLIER: POLICE are investigating whether Saint Stephens students used the so-called ‘dark web’ to buy the drugs which sparked the overdose crisis.

Technology experts say young people are increasingly turning to a series of underground websites, some of which are known as ‘the eBay of drugs’ to obtain the illicit substances, which can be accessed and bought in seconds anonymously.

Police investigating the mass drug overdose at Saint Stephens have confirmed they are looking into what connections the shocking incident had to the dark web.

COAST SCHOOL DRUG OVERDOSE A ‘WAKE UP CALL’

Detective Senior Sergeant Greg Aubort said the computers of students involved would be searched.

Acting Detective Inspector Greg Aubort. Pics Adam Head

“It’s important to understand that the drug, it’s not your classical illicit drug. To understand if it was obtained on the worldwide web, or if obtained by alternate means, we need to understand as a service those dynamics and ... where this generation is moving to obtain drugs like that and the motivation for them,” he said.

“We look at all those things. The existence of the dark web is known. I won’t comment any further than that.”

PARENTS’ VIGIL FOR STUDENTS

Police are investigating whether students obtained the drugs through the ‘dark web’.

The dark web is the name for websites and pages which cannot be found through search engines and requires special software and passwords to access.

Illegal drugs, pornography and even guns have been shared and sold on these pages.

These services are often paid for using crypto currency such as bitcoin.

The selling of illegal drugs in dark web markets began in 2011 and has grown dramatically in recent years.

A 2016 report by the Global Drug Survey found that the number of purchases has grown from 4.5 per cent to 6.7 per cent in just a year.

Of those people, 9.3 per cent of dark net users had bought drugs at some point.”

Among the most prominent marketplaces was Silkroad, an underground marketplace which marketed itself as “the eBay of drugs”.

WHAT IS PHENIBUT?

The overdose incident has sent shockwaves through the community. Picture Glenn Hampson

Technology adviser Rob Livingstone said the dark web made it easier than ever to commit criminal acts with impunity. “The dark web is a place where your existence cannot be readily identified and you leave no digital footprint,” he said.

“It is often used by people with common interest such as drug dealing, illicit additives and so on and the irony is that information on how to access it is all over the internet so you don’t have to be a rocket science to dip your toe in.”

PRINCIPAL DISTRAUGHT OVER OVERDOSES

Phenibut has been named as potentially being the substance ingested by the students.

QUT Associate Professor Nicholas Suzor said it was easier than ever for young people to use the dark web to obtain illegal drugs.

“It is getting easier every day and the use of user-friendly clients such as the Tor browser allows people to get to these hidden sites,” he said. “These websites can operate as a marketplace for illicit substances and services, drugs for example.”

“In the press has got a lot of attention for the people who are selling goods and services which they’d prefer not be seen by law enforcement.”