This photo provided by Amy Neville shows her son Alex, who died in June 2020 at the age of 14 after taking a fake pill.
As the United States grapples with its deadliest overdose crisis to date, a national crime prevention group is calling on the Justice Department to crack down on social media’s role in spreading the virus. fentanylthe drug which largely causes a worrying increase in overdose deaths among adolescents.
The National Crime Prevention Council sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday, requesting an investigation.
The group known for having ads McGruff the criminal dog he is particularly concerned about the sale of counterfeit pills fentanyl on Snapchat, a popular platform among teenagers.
“Drug dealers are using American innovation to sell deadly products,” wrote CEO Paul DelPonte. “Social media platforms bear some responsibility for these deaths.”
Overdose deaths hit a record high last year, averaging one death every five minutes in the United States. Among adolescents aged 10 to 19, deaths rose 109 percent between 2019 and 2021, according to median monthly data from the Centers for Disease Control. and Prevention. The vast majority of those deaths, 84%, involved fentanylaccording to the report released last week.
Merchants use many social media and money-exchange platforms, sometimes in the same transactions, but Snapchat’s encrypted technology and disappearing messages make catching merchants especially difficult, DelPonte said.
Snapchat’s parent company, for its part, said it had taken significant steps to improve security on the platform and saw user reports on drug sales drop from more than 23% last year to 3.3%. of last month. He is also backing a new bill to strengthen the reporting of drug activity by social media companies.
Jennifer Stout, vice president of global public policy at Snap, said the company uses the technology to identify and bring down traffickers and support law enforcement investigations. “We will continue to do everything we can to address this national crisis,” she said in a statement.
however, Snapchat is the most common platform that bereaved families mention when they reach out to their group for help, DelPonte said.
Those parents included Amy Neville, whose son Alex was 14 when she bought a pill she thought was Oxycontin through the platform in June 2020. The boy had just told his parents about his drug experimentation and they were about to put him on medication.
One day she cut her hair, went to lunch with her father and went out with friends. After returning to the family’s home in Orange County, California, he went to her room and at one point took the pill that ended her life.
- “The next morning I found him in his bed. The rest is madness,” said Amy Neville. “After her death, we asked ourselves, ‘How could this happen?’ We thought we were prepared.”
His family knew little about him. fentanyl, which according to federal authorities can be deadly in quantities smaller than the tip of a pencil. Neville had a tragic upbringing in the years following his son’s death, and he’s also heard of multiple families whose children overdosed after buying pills via Snapchat, often for less than $25.
DOUBLE SEIZURES
While the latest data on overdose deaths have some encouraging signs, the number of pills with fentanyl seized more than doubled this year, the DEA said this week. The drug it is largely produced in illicit laboratories in Mexico, with precursor chemicals purchased in China, authorities said.
For drug dealers, social media today holds a similar place to phones and pagers in years past, said Jim Carroll, a former director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy who also serves as an unpaid member of the safety board that advises Snap. There is no data on how much fentanyl it’s trafficked squarely through social networking sites, he said, but Snapchat’s immense popularity among young people could also help explain why traffickers use the site and there are more platform-related deaths, he said.
“You can’t go after the phone company just because it’s the method of communication,” he said. However, “all these social media companies need to do more.”
