Those in Germany looking for our range of wonderful products won’t find Azarius any longer when using the Google search engine. What happened? Well, first of all: we’re still here. So nothing happened to us. Also, our webstore is not blocked in Germany. But the basic idea is that Azarius won’t show up in the German search results of Google. This obviously is censorship which hurts us. We owe it to our German customers to explain the situation.
How did all this happen?
It begins with a tip to youth care in the German town of Paderborn which alerted the organization to the idea that our website encourages youth to use drugs. Youth care followed this up with a motion at the office which inspects dangerous media for the youth, the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien (Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons.) In a quick procedure, the office decided that the URL Azarius.de was to be added to section C of the list of dangerous media for the youth. What is section C? This is a list on which you will find neo-Nazi’s, IS and child pornography. Sigh.
The case of youth care can be summarized as follows: Azarius is accused of recommending “psychically active substances as drugs for parties or concentration aid. The working of the substances is advertised without a transparent indication of the contents. This is a case of the glorification of drugs.”
At Azarius we’ve always been advocates of presenting honest and factual information which makes the difference between the responsible and irresponsible use of our products but in no case constitutes turning on (or seducing) minors to use substances which are legal in The Netherlands. The 18+ warning that appears when accessing our website makes clear that we do not cater to minors. Azarius obviously has presented its case at a hearing. But to no avail – at least for now.
The legal battle is far from over as we feel that what we do and stand for has been grossly misrepresented. Azarius has been around for quite some time. It is a certified company with a large number of employees which always follows legal procedures and is a member of the industry association VLOS for an industry that in the Netherlands consists of over 150 other shops. We do NOT sell research chemicals or banned substances. As an honest business, we demand to be treated fairly, just as grown-ups deserve to find us on Google.
We need your help! What can you do?
Of course we will keep you posted on any developments regarding this case. And we can always use help. Any suggestion is welcome.
- Share this article on social media platforms.
- Promote the use of search engines which respect privacy and abhor censorship (Startpage.com, DuckDuck Go).
- Do you know any representatives/employees at Google?
- Recommend us (German-based) legal experts, lawyers with experience in this field.
- Inform other psychonauts that we still exist.
- Shop with us! We need your support more than ever!
- Last but not least: don’t forget to bookmark us!
Update
Want to contact our Offline store in Amsterdam, click here to go to the website.
