Li Zhengyi, Du Xiangyu, Liao Xiaojing, Jiang Xiaoqian, Champagne-Langabeer Tiffany
Department of Computer Science, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, United States.
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX, United States.
J Med Internet Res. 2021 Feb 17;23(2):e24486. doi: 10.2196/24486.
Opioid use disorder presents a public health issue afflicting millions across the globe. There is a pressing need to understand the opioid supply chain to gain new insights into the mitigation of opioid use and effectively combat the opioid crisis. The role of anonymous online marketplaces and forums that resemble eBay or Amazon, where anyone can post, browse, and purchase opioid commodities, has become increasingly important in opioid trading. Therefore, a greater understanding of anonymous markets and forums may enable public health officials and other stakeholders to comprehend the scope of the crisis. However, to the best of our knowledge, no large-scale study, which may cross multiple anonymous marketplaces and is cross-sectional, has been conducted to profile the opioid supply chain and unveil characteristics of opioid suppliers, commodities, and transactions.
We aimed to profile the opioid supply chain in anonymous markets and forums via a large-scale, longitudinal measurement study on anonymous market listings and posts. Toward this, we propose a series of techniques to collect data; identify opioid jargon terms used in the anonymous marketplaces and forums; and profile the opioid commodities, suppliers, and transactions.
We first conducted a whole-site crawl of anonymous online marketplaces and forums to solicit data. We then developed a suite of opioid domain-specific text mining techniques (eg, opioid jargon detection and opioid trading information retrieval) to recognize information relevant to opioid trading activities (eg, commodities, price, shipping information, and suppliers). Subsequently, we conducted a comprehensive, large-scale, longitudinal study to demystify opioid trading activities in anonymous markets and forums.
A total of 248,359 listings from 10 anonymous online marketplaces and 1,138,961 traces (ie, threads of posts) from 6 underground forums were collected. Among them, we identified 28,106 opioid product listings and 13,508 opioid-related promotional and review forum traces from 5147 unique opioid suppliers' IDs and 2778 unique opioid buyers' IDs. Our study characterized opioid suppliers (eg, activeness and cross-market activities), commodities (eg, popular items and their evolution), and transactions (eg, origins and shipping destination) in anonymous marketplaces and forums, which enabled a greater understanding of the underground trading activities involved in international opioid supply and demand.
The results provide insight into opioid trading in the anonymous markets and forums and may prove an effective mitigation data point for illuminating the opioid supply chain.
阿片类药物使用障碍是一个全球性的公共卫生问题，困扰着数百万人。迫切需要了解阿片类药物供应链，以便获得减轻阿片类药物使用的新见解，并有效应对阿片类药物危机。类似于eBay或亚马逊的匿名在线市场和论坛的作用在阿片类药物交易中变得越来越重要，在这些平台上任何人都可以发布、浏览和购买阿片类商品。因此，更好地了解这些匿名市场和论坛可能使公共卫生官员和其他利益相关者理解危机的范围。然而，据我们所知，尚未进行过可能跨越多个匿名市场且为横断面研究的大规模研究，以描绘阿片类药物供应链并揭示阿片类药物供应商、商品和交易的特征。
我们旨在通过对匿名市场列表和帖子进行大规模纵向测量研究，描绘匿名市场和论坛中的阿片类药物供应链。为此，我们提出了一系列收集数据的技术；识别匿名市场和论坛中使用的阿片类行话术语；并描绘阿片类商品、供应商和交易。
我们首先对匿名在线市场和论坛进行全站爬网以获取数据。然后，我们开发了一套特定于阿片类领域的文本挖掘技术（例如，阿片类行话检测和阿片类交易信息检索），以识别与阿片类交易活动相关的信息（例如，商品、价格、运输信息和供应商）。随后，我们进行了一项全面、大规模的纵向研究，以揭开匿名市场和论坛中阿片类交易活动的神秘面纱。
从10个匿名在线市场收集了总共248,359条列表，从6个地下论坛收集了1,138,961条痕迹（即帖子线索）。其中，我们从5147个唯一的阿片类药物供应商ID和2778个唯一的阿片类药物买家ID中识别出28,106条阿片类产品列表和13,508条与阿片类药物相关的促销和评论论坛痕迹。我们的研究描绘了匿名市场和论坛中的阿片类药物供应商（例如活跃度和跨市场活动）、商品（例如热门商品及其演变）和交易（例如来源和运输目的地），从而能够更好地理解国际阿片类药物供需中涉及的地下交易活动。
研究结果为匿名市场和论坛中的阿片类药物交易提供了见解，可能成为阐明阿片类药物供应链的有效缓解数据点。
