I am extremely skeptical that silk road like sites reduce violence to any significant degree. I'm under the impression that most of the violence is further up in the supply chain.
I'd suspect they likely do reduce drug deaths and fraud, though. Their escrow and reputation systems guarantee that the vast majority of drug sales are pure products and at the correct dosage listed.
I don't know about that. I think it's pretty common for people to build up a strong rep and then at the end pull off a big scam before re-registering as someone else.
