Almost everyones opinions consist of pure speculation because interceptions are very rare. There are some facts. People buying small amounts of non scheduled research chemicals in the USA are never raided. Some have been visited knock and talk style by feds of various sort including but not limited to postal inspectors, but I have not heard of charges being pressed. Even bulk importers of non scheduled research chemicals have had shipments inspected by customs and sent on their way after they tested negative for anything illegal. Non scheduled research chemicals are safe to buy, and although you should still use security measures to obtain them, it so far has not been very important. People who sell research chemicals have more to worry about, even if they are not scheduled. There have been several RC vendors arrested and charged under the analog act, and some have received life sentences. It seems like law enforcement only target the blatant RC vendors, who have web shops with advertisements all over the place, or people organizing huge group buys / importing for completely public forums. This may be because law enforcement only cares about blatant RC dealers, or it could be because law enforcement are not very skilled at doing internet investigations against low key RC vendors. In all cases the busted RC vendors were using shit security. In at least some cases bulk research chemical interceptions did not lead to immediate arrest but rather led to the importer being put under surveillance and then arrested later on unrelated drug trafficking charges that were related to being put under surveillance for importing research chemicals, but not for importing research chemicals. Buyers who have small orders of lowly scheduled drugs such as Xanax intercepted almost always only receive a love letter warning them that if they keep ordering scheduled drugs they may be charged and arrested. Some times people receive multiple letters like this and still nothing happens, but it is likely that if you get enough love letters something will come of it. You shouldn't reuse a box after you get a love letter because it could be flagged, but in practice people have continued to get shipments, including illegal ones, after having previously been sent love letter(s) to the same address. Intercepted non-specifically scheduled research chemicals have also resulted in love letters, so have marijuana seeds. People saying small personal use orders of cocaine or oxy will result in love letters are almost certainly just speculating, I would like to hear from an established person on any forum who obtained a love letter for schedule one substances of any amount because no case of this ever happening comes to mind. I can't even think of any truly personal use interceptions ever happening though. In Australia a person had a not quite personal use order of several schedule one drugs intercepted. If I remember correctly it contained MDMA, ketamine and LSD, a few grams for the former two items and half a sheet or so of LSD. This resulted in an armed dawn raid. The person received probation as it was their first offense, but they could have received a prison sentence. I have heard of ounce orders of marijuana being intercepted leading to knock and talk by postal inspectors and eventual charges being filed, I believe people usually receive probation and mandatory drug rehab for this, but if it was a few eight balls of coke it is more likely jail or prison time would be involved imo. several people on DZF were arrested for drug orders, it is not clear if the vendors they were working with were LE to begin with or were turned by LE. That forum was an FBI run honeypot. Several of the vendors on it were raided and arrested by FBI and sent to prison, and although I know several of their customers were arrested as well I am not certain the details of the size of orders they were placing or if they were also vendors. I can try to find out more about this, but I was never a part of DZF and only know a few people who were. operation raw deal targeted the online steroid trafficking scene. They are very similar to the online recreational drug trafficking scene and there is a slight but significant membership overlap. A targeted international operation against them led to hundreds of arrests, but I believe they focused far more on producers and distributors than customers. I am not certain how many, if any , customers were arrested, although law enforcement did say in a press release that they had huge lists of customers and were considering pressing charges. I don't think they ever did against customers though. Someone from the steroid scene can probably go into more detail about the fall out of raw deal. Obviously TFM is the most recent drug forum bust. Over a dozen vendors were arrested as well a handful of customers, although I think they were large customers. This is only what we know about though, nobody is certain how many other arrests are tied to TFM that were not part of main indictment. At least a few were though. I would imagine if LE really cared about customers a lot they could have busted more customers, and would have been more likely to do an internationally coordinated take down of the entire forum. When CP forums get busted it is common for interpol coordinated task forces around the world to carry out simultaneous raids against thousands of members, the fact that this did not happen for TFM leads me to think that either A. law enforcement was not interested in busting the majority of participants or B. Law enforcement had trouble to target the majority of participants for some reason, for one they couldn't get a vending account apparently (TFM was highly screened for vendors) and for two at least some of them were using GPG (le could only intercept communications that were not GPG encrypted). Of course they could have covertly bugged all of the targets laptops, followed them around recording the addresses on mail they were sending etc, and apparently they did not do this since only a dozen or so vendors are confirmed as busted and even fewer customers. Also, it is entirely possible that we just are unaware of the number of customers who were compromised. Vendors clearly have much more to worry about, customer arrests are almost always from interceptions but vendors have targeted investigations against them that use technical, human intelligence, and surveillance attacks. So far the technical attacks have not been in the slightest bit impressive and in two cases consisted of Hushmail being a total fraud fed honeypot. The human intelligence attacks and surveillance attacks would also have been entirely preventable if the vendors had been using the proper security protocols. All that said, it is technical possible for a small time customer to be royally ass fucked by law enforcement. You break a dozen different federal laws by ordering a single gram of weed here and they could try to hit you with a life sentence over it if they really wanted to. You are entirely at their mercy in this aspect. Money laundering, conspiracy, using telecommunications for drug deals, using the postal system illegally, participating in a continuing criminal enterprise, trafficking drugs across state or international lines, obstruction of justice, all of these are things that you are technically doing when you order your gram of weed here. The charges you could have put against you for ordering a gram of weed here are far more severe than you could have put against you for ordering it on the corner. But it is also extremely unlikely for such charges to be filed against you over ordering a gram of weed, and it is extremely unlikely that a domestic package will be intercepted. At the end of the day, of course vendors have the most to worry about, and more the bigger they are. Customers have the least to worry about, and the smaller they are the less they have to worry about. I think that everyone should at a minimum be using Tor and GPG, plus mixing their bitcoins or obtaining them anonymously. Significant vendors should be using more security than that. And using more security is not going to get you busted, there is no such thing as being too secure but you can certainly not be secure enough.