U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Drugs and the Internet: An Overview of the Threat to America's Youth

NCJ Number
196361
Date Published
December 2001
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This document is a report on the role Internet websites can play in adolescent drug use.
Abstract
The National Drug Intelligence Center, a division of the U.S. Department of Justice prepared this report concerning the impact of the Internet on the production, use, and sale of MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine), GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate), and LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) as well as the production, use, and sale of drug paraphernalia. For the purposes of this report, the Internet resources studied included registered domains, subdomains, newsgroups, bulletin boards, e-mail, chat rooms, list servers, and also File Transfer Protocol. Study data were gathered in compliance with privacy laws and consisted solely of publicly available information. Examples of Internet information considered to promote or facilitate drug use are given. Legal issues that may limit the types of regulation that may be applied to Internet based information and speech that promote or facilitate are discussed. Legal issues explored include First Amendment concerns, applicable jurisdiction and privacy statutes. 44 notes, 1 table