Well, it's an interesting thought that these adds are 'sting-related'.

There's an opening scene in the great Al Pacino movie "Sea of Love", in which the NY police department is running a sting to round-up a number of criminals. The bait for the sting is that they've won a complementary breakfast to meet with the NY Yankees, and about 50 felons with wants and warrants are calmly rounded up.

Obviously, this must be the benchmark for what SD LE would like to do to both the providers and hobbyists who frequent this board. From their perspective, not only are we all violating the law, but also flouting our transgressions by discussing them openly on TER. Combine this with the fact that most active hobbyists earn salaries considerably higher than those in law enforcement, and one can easily see why LE are desperate to convict us "perps".

I would take a somewhat different view. Eric Schlosser has an interesting new book ("Reefer Madness: Sex Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market"), which argues that the hidden economy is an important contributor to the gross national product. I think that we hobbyists are simply doing our bit to prime the pump (as it were) of an otherwise lousy economy. If you want to stimulate the economy, put money in the hands  of those (i.e., providers) who will be immediately buying goods and services. Viewed in this way, one could argue that patronizing providers is a patriotic act, which will stave off another recession.