THE death of promising young student Alon Boulton, who was able to buy a potent drug on the internet, is a tragic one. Known as the “Dark Net”, websites like the one he was said to have used – Silk Road – are worryingly on the rise and easily accessed by both people with drug addictions and those with a curiosity such as 23-year-old Alon.

The site used an online tool which masked the location of its servers, meaning visitors could buy and sell drugs and guns using bitcoins – a form of cyber cash – so as not to be traced.

His father Richard is now calling for such “immoral” websites to be disabled and tighter controls are certainly needed to prevent more people being able to access drugs as easily as they buy an item on eBay.

But with technology so advanced as it is, this may prove to be a difficult task and as Mr Boulton says, it is hard to see a practical solution.

Last month the black market website Silk Road was shut down.

However, it is just the tip of the iceberg with a growing number of other so-called underground websites still operating beyond the reach of ordinary internet users.

Measures put in place by search engines such as Google to tackle parts of the “Dark Net” including child abuse images should be welcomed but clearly more needs to be done.

If the technology exists to create and maintain such black market sites, surely the equivalent can be developed to track them and shut them down.

But as Mr Boulton points out, educating our youngsters of the dangers of harmful substances is equally as important.

Let’s hope Alon’s death and his father’s message will go some way to raising awareness so others don’t meet the same fate.