Opinion | Marijuana being sold on e-commerce site Taobao, report says

They say you can get anything online in China these days – from your fake vanity iPhone “logins” to quirkier purchases such as rental boyfriends/girlfriends and names for unborn children.

But the legally-ambiguous stuff are the most interesting. Smuggled milk powder from Hong Kong, a hot commodity these days, fetches higher prices by the day. A tin of this tax-free white powder will cost more than 300 yuan (HK$385) to 400 yuan online depending on which US brand you buy, a markup of roughly 20 per cent.

Craving a Pyongyang? No, not the chain of restaurants or the mobile phone brand of the same name - the totalitarian country’s capital also gives its name to a brand of cigarettes manufactured by the Pyongyang Paeksan Tobacco, a joint venture formed by Chinese and North Korean interests.

Paeksan brand cigarettes will cost you about 45 yuan per carton on e-commerce site Taobao, while Pyongyang brand cigarettes are more expensive at 50 yuan per carton. Here's the catch: the cigarettes are only sold as "cigarette packaging" on the website. It is not known whether cigarettes are included in the final product.

Packs of DPRK-manufactured “Ox bezoar” (ox gallstones or cattle gall bladder bile) used for removing body toxins are also available for about 750 yuan.

The latest e-commerce sensation is, however, more dubious than smuggled cigarettes. A reporter from the Southern Metropolis Daily recently alleged to have attempted – and succeeded – in procuring a gram of cannabis online for a cool 100 yuan, via Alipay.