via crimprof: the daily news reports that dealers are posting their wares on craigslist:

“Ski lift tickets are here for sale … Tina Turner tickets … best seats around!” Offers like these appear virtually every day on craigslist, and they are thinly veiled ads posted by people hawking cocaine (ski) or crystal meth (cristina or tina)…

“They’ll offer ski tickets in July in New York, and Tina Turner tickets when she’s not performing in town.” Marijuana ads are more, er, blunt. It is usually referred to by name or as “420.” …

One case involved a Citigroup vice president, Mark Rayner, 33, who was selling Ecstasy. “Anyone want to go to roxy and get high and enjoy hex hector? E., K, Snow, tina, its all good,” he wrote on craigslist. He did the deal near his midtown office, giving an undercover agent 50 Ecstasy pills and 7 grams of cocaine for $1,200.

i’d heard about the craigslist crackdown on sex workers, but these drug ads seem even more amateurish — and way too thinly veiled, given the looong sentences meted out to dealers these days. why would dealers ignore such sanctions and post anyway? i’m guessing there’s some sort of contagion effect, in which illicit ads beget other illicit ads. that is, persons encountering an ad for an illegal product or service will likely deem it safe to post their own ads for illegal products or services.