Editorial: Doing it by the 'book

There is apparently a strong online black market for booze and drugs.

Just last week in an editorial I was referring to the internet as the Wild West - a vast country of faceless strangers pushing boundaries because they feel they can.

Even though the internet as we know it is decades old, there are new frontiers on the edge of lawlessness opening up seemingly all the time.

But just because the way people are getting up to mischief is evolving doesn't mean they're not breaking some pretty straightforward and traditional laws.

Laws like those against selling drugs, or even silly laws like those restricting the sale of alcohol (and if you're most retailers, anything) on certain days of the year.

No wonder some people are looking for alternative outlets.

We reported yesterday that drugs and alcohol are being advertised for sale on Facebook pages.

Buy, sell and swap-type pages had several posts from people either looking for or selling these items on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Read the story here: Online black market for booze and drugs

These pages tend to be closed groups so perhaps that allows people to think they're somehow operating in secret - but there's no such thing as secret when you're posting to thousands of law-abiding people you don't know.

And the police are watching, telling us they're maintaining a keen watch over the local buy, swap and sell Facebook pages.

Presumably people selling illicit items online are giving out their details to buyers, so it couldn't be too difficult to track them down.

Of course worse things happen online all the time, but this strange mix of cheekiness, daring, stupidity and ingenuity is yet another sign that as technology evolves for the better, someone, somewhere will figure out a way to exploit it for dodgy purposes.