Most of us have heard of these so-called ‘underground’ websites like the Silk Road lurking amidst the “dark web”, where it’s supposedly possible to buy anything from drugs to guns and even assassins for hire, but actually locating them is an altogether different story.

To access the Silk Road for example, you’ll need to navigate through a site like TheHiddenWiki in order to find its correct URL, and to do that you’ll first of all need to download the Tor browser. Not exactly child’s play if you happen to be wasted on meth and hoping to put off that come down for a few more hours.

Doing so has its rewards though – once there, it’s said you’ll find all kinds of illegal drugs for sale – weed, opiates, ecstasy, acid – sort of like a candy shop for junkies and party-goers, in you like.

To make things easier for druggies, junkies, anarchists and the curious alike, one illicit website has brazenly decided to step out of the shadows, launching an advertising campaign on YouTube no less. Known as Atlantis, the site’s anonymous operators have uploaded a cheery video that touts the virtues of getting as “high as a kite.” According to TheVerge.com, the site plays on a dilemma that pretty much any habitual drug user can sympathize with:

“Meet Charlie. He’s a stoner, and recently his job made him move cities, and he can’t find any dank buds.”

Writing on Reddit earlier this month, a poster claiming to the the CEO of Atlantic seemed unconcerned about what kind of attention his blatant advertising of illicit trade might attract. In fact, he even boasted that Atlantic is gaining users faster than Silk Road, due to the lower commissions it charges and the simpler encryption tools it uses.

“The road has more users, but our service is better,” he wrote at the time.

When the CEO was questioned about whether he thought the publicity might attract the attention of law enforcement, he pointed out that the cops almost certainly knew of its existence anyway:

“We want to bring attention to the site and bring our vendors more buyers. Law enforcement is going to be aware of us (and probably already is) regardless of the way we choose to put our product out there.”

It’s an open question whether or not sites like Atlantis and the Silk Road will be able to evade the authorities for long. One of the earliest online drugs marketplaces, called Farmer’s Market, was closed down last year and saw eight of its staffers arrested and charged by the police.

Elsewhere, the authorities are making efforts to try and regulate Bitcoin, which serves as the lifeblood of these illicit sites. Just last month the US government seized control of Mt. Gox’s Dwolla accounts, an action that some believe has forced it to suspend withdrawals in US dollars for two weeks. More recently, financial authorities in California have sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Bitcoin Foundation, asking it to stop engaging in unauthorized money transmissions, despite the fact that it does no such thing. For its part, Mt. Gox has begun insisting that its customers verify their identity before they can exchange their Bitcoins for dollars. The cryptocurrency still remains the most anonymous payment method on the web, but these developments all seem to suggest that the authorities want to change that.

Then again, we’re also seeing efforts to respond to the US government’s incursion on Bitcoin. Bitcoin services such as “LocalCoin” for example, allow users to hide all trace of their identity when carrying out transactions.

As for Atlantis, its CEO doesn’t seem to be sweating it just yet:

“We did a lot of planning in relation to this and haven’t had any security issues so far. We take many measures to protect our identity.”