Background: 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. Objective: 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. Methods: 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. Results: 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. Conclusions: 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.

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中文翻译：

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揭开暗网阿片类药物交易的神秘面纱：匿名市场列表和论坛帖子的内容分析

背景：阿片类药物使用障碍是一个公共健康问题，困扰着全球成千上万的人。迫切需要了解阿片类药物供应链，从而获得新的见解，以减轻阿片类药物的使用并有效应对阿片类药物危机。类似于eBay或Amazon的匿名在线市场和论坛（任何人都可以张贴，浏览和购买阿片类商品的角色）在阿片类贸易中变得越来越重要。因此，对匿名市场和论坛的更多了解可以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，尚未进行可能跨多个匿名市场且具有横断面的大规模研究来描述阿片类药物供应链并揭示阿片类药物供应商的特征，商品和交易。目的：我们旨在通过对匿名市场清单和职位进行大规模的纵向测量研究，在匿名市场和论坛中描述阿片类药物的供应链。为此，我们提出了一系列收集数据的技术。确定匿名市场和论坛中使用的阿片类术语术语；并描述阿片类商品，供应商和交易。方法：我们首先对匿名在线市场和论坛进行了全站点爬网，以获取数据。然后，我们开发了一套专门针对阿片类药物的文本挖掘技术（例如，阿片类术语检测和阿片类药物贸易信息检索），以识别与阿片类药物贸易活动有关的信息（例如商品，价格，运输信息和供应商）。随后，我们进行了全面，大规模，对匿名市场和论坛中阿片类药物交易活动进行神秘化的纵向研究。结果：收集了来自10个匿名在线市场的248,359条列表以及来自6个地下论坛的1,138,961条痕迹（即帖子线索）。其中，我们从5147个唯一的阿片类供应商ID和2778个唯一的阿片类买家ID中确定了28106个阿片类产品列表和13508个与阿片类相关的促销和评论论坛痕迹。我们的研究对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，受欢迎的商品及其演变）和交易（例如，来源和运输目的地）进行了分类，从而使人们对阿片类药物的了解更加深入。从事国际阿片类供需的地下贸易活动。结论：

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