Other members of the community have been helping out, too. PlutoPete, a vendor from the original Silk Road who sold cannabis seeds and other legal items, has provided ScreamMyName with packaging to safely send the samples to Barcelona. “A box of baggies, and a load of different moisture barrier bags,” PlutoPete told me over the phone. “That’s what all the vendors use.”

It’s a modest program so far. ScreamMyName told me that so far he had gotten enough public funding to purchase five different Energy Control tests, in addition to the ten or so he’s sent himself so far. “The program created is still in its infancy and it is growing and changing as we go along but I have a lot of faith in what we’re doing,” he says.

But the spirit is contagious: elmo666, the other deep web user testing cocaine, originally kept the results of the drug tests to himself, but he, too, saw a benefit to distributing the data. “It is clear that it is a useful service to other users, keeping vendors honest and drugs (and their users) safe,” he told me. He started to report his findings to others on the forums, and then created a thread with summaries of the test results, as well as comments from the vendors if they provided it. Other users were soon basing their decisions on what to buy on elmo666‘s tests.

“I’m defo trying the cola based on the incredibly helpful elmo and his energy control results and recommendations,” wrote user jayk1984. On top of this, elmo666 plans to launch an independent site on the deep web that will collate all of these results, which should act as a resource for users of all the marketplaces.

As word of elmo666's efforts spread, he began getting requests from drug dealers who wanted him to use their wares for testing. Clearly, they figured that a positive result from Energy Control would be a fantastic marketing tool to draw more customers. They even offered elmo666 free samples. (He passed.)

Meanwhile, some in the purchasing community are arguing that those running markets on the deep web should be providing quality control themselves. PlutoPete told me over the phone that he had been in discussions about this with Dread Pirate Roberts, the pseudonymous owner of the original Silk Road site. “We [had been] talking about that on a more organized basis on Silk Road 1, doing lots of anonymous buys to police each category. But of course they took the thing [Silk Road] down before we got it properly off the ground,” he lamented.

But perhaps it is best that the users, those who are actually consuming the drugs, remain in charge of shaming dealers and warning each other. “It’s our responsibility to police the market based on reviews and feedback,” elmo666 wrote in an Evolution forum post. It seems that in the lawless space of the deep web, where everything from child porn to weapons are sold openly, users have cooperated in an organic display of self-regulation to stamp out those particular batches of drugs that are more likely to harm users.

“That’s always been the case with the deep web,” PlutoPete told me. Indeed, ever since Silk Road, a stable of the drug markets has been the review system, where buyers can leave a rating and feedback for vendors, letting others know about the reliability of the seller. But DoctorX’s lab, rigorously testing the products with scientific instruments, takes it a step further.