Identification and Characterization of Illegal Sales of Cannabis and Nicotine Delivery Products on Telegram Messaging Platform.

This article focuses on identifying and characterizing the unregulated sale of tobacco, nicotine, and cannabis products on the encrypted messaging platform Telegram. Using keyword searches, the study found 20 public Telegram groups with over 262,000 subscribers and analyzed 43,963 unique messages, of which 7% promoted direct-to-consumer sales, predominantly cannabis-derived products (83.25%), followed by tobacco/nicotine products (6.46%). Most sales involved individual sellers using direct messaging, with a smaller portion linking to external e-commerce websites, many of which lacked robust age verification at point-of-sale. The findings highlight Telegram as an emerging marketplace facilitating potentially illegal and unregulated sales that circumvent traditional retail licensing and regulatory controls, underscoring the need for enhanced monitoring and enforcement on such platforms.