A dark part of the internet is making it easier for people to import drugs to the Bailiwick, police are reporting.
Figures from the Bailiwick Law Enforcement's Annual Report for 2017 showed the dark web is responsible for a spike in the number of drugs seizures they have made.
Compared to 2016, the number of individual seizures of cannabis skyrocketed, with a total of 124 separate attempted imports being found and taken by Guernsey Police or Border Agency. In 2016 there were only 39.
Additionally, the number of class A drugs found nearly doubled, and there was a small increase in class C drugs.
Pictured: The statistics for Drug Seizures from the 2017 report.
These more recent seizures were all of smaller amounts, however, and the report said this was because of people attempting to order drugs directly off of the dark web - this opposed to for commercial use:
"It is noted that there is a rise in the number of seizures of herbal cannabis and cannabis resin. This is directly attributable to the identification of significant numbers of ‘dark web’ importations of small amounts of these commodities."
By definition, the dark web is the part of the internet only accessible by means of special software, allowing users and website operators to remain anonymous or untraceable.
It has posed problems for law enforcement agencies across the world, facilitating human trafficking, drug sales and also child pornography.
Pictured: Law enforcement officers are working together to tackle crimes related to the dark web.
Patrick Rice, Head of Bailiwick Law Enforcement, said they had been able to minimise the effect of the dark web on Guernsey drug imports since they first spiked in 2017.
"We applied a variety of different tactics to tackle this problem," he said.
"We have been able to use intelligence we gather and share it with our partners in other jurisdictions, then, through a variety of methods, decide whether to disrupt the activity or seek to wait and arrest parties involved.
"It was a problem in 2017 but we have been able to minimise it now."
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