POLICE say they are powerless to stop a growing trend of drug deals organised over social networking websites.
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Tasmania Police's e-crime chief, Detective Senior Sergeant Luke Manhood said police need concrete information that will allow them approval to track the online activity of particular internet users.
Launceston youth say that drug deals, particularly concerning marijuana and ecstasy, can be done easily and surreptitiously through communicating over Facebook without attracting any police attention.
At least three Facebook users, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Sunday Examiner that friends have posted messages publicly, or used the site's private message themselves, calling for illegal drugs and achieving success.
One Launceston man said that with smart phones being more affordable and accessible, users, particularly in their late teens, had been using social networking sites to discreetly find drugs.
He said networking between friends had allowed people to come into contact with dealers over Facebook's private message service.
Another Launceston man said that although he had successfully arranged meetings and deals through the service, serious dealers were reticent to communicate this way.
``I have found dealers are very wary of using this method though, I've seen it more between people that are friends than between someone and a bigger time dealer,'' he said.
``Most larger scale dealers use either text messaging or phone calls. Some try to be very discreet if anything is appearing as text either on the net or via phone.''
On releasing the United Nation's International Narcotics Control Board 2011 report in February, board president Hamid Ghodse said illicit drugs and illegal prescription medicines were being ordered online from illegally-operating internet pharmacies which were finding customers through social media like YouTube, Facebook and internet chatrooms.
He said this drug marketing exposed a far larger audience to dangerous products, particularly young people.
Detective Sergeant Manhood said police were generally powerless to track drug deals over the internet.
Although the e-crime squad did not look specifically into online drug dealing, he said there had been increased concern about the internet's potential to assist the activity through social media and services like Skype.
``Police have telephone intercept powers so maybe we can access information on regular phones that we can't on the (voice-over-internet) services,'' Detective Senior Sergeant Manhood said.
``We don't monitor or trawl through social networks because people have a right and expectation to privacy, but like telephones and mail, if there was specific information that people were engaging in criminal activity then we would look to the appropriate authorities to do it.''
The most recent National Drug Strategy Household Survey, released last year found illicit drug use had increased from statistics gathered three years before.
It found that out of 26,000 secondary-school aged children, more than 10 per cent admitted to using cannabis and an increase in community tolerance of the drug.
The survey found that ecstasy use had decreased and was perceived to be less readily available.
