WASHINGTON –
As the United States faces its deadliest overdose crisis yet, a national crime prevention group is calling on the Justice Department to crack down on social media’s role in the spread of the drug fentanyl, largely a disturbing increase in overdose deaths among teenagers.
The National Crime Prevention Council sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday, requesting an investigation. The group known for its ads featuring McGruff the Crime Dog is particularly concerned about the sale of fake fentanyl-containing pills on Snapchat, a popular platform among teenagers.
“Drug traffickers are using American innovation to sell deadly products,” executive director Paul DePonte wrote. “Social media platforms bear some responsibility for these deaths.”
Overdose deaths in the United States 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 monthly median data from the Centers for Disease Control. and Prevention. The vast majority of those deaths, 84%, involved fentanyl, according to the report released last week.
Retailers use numerous social media and money-exchange platforms, sometimes in the same transactions, but Snapchat’s encrypted technology and disappearing messages make it especially difficult to arrest retailers, DePonte said.
The Justice Department did not comment on the letter.
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 more than 23% last year, down to 3.3%. of last month. He also supports a new bill to strengthen the reporting of drug-related activity by social media companies.
Jennifer Stout, vice president of global public policy at Snap, said the company uses the technology to identify and take down retailers and support law enforcement investigations. “We will continue to do everything we can to address this national crisis,” she said in a statement.
Still, Snapchat is the most common platform mentioned by bereaved families when they ask his group for help, DePonte 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 on the verge of putting him on medication.
One day he cut his hair, went to lunch with his father and went out with friends. After returning to the family home in Orange County, California, he went into his bedroom and at one point took the pill that ended his life.
“The next morning I found him in his bed. The rest is madness,” said Amy Neville. “After her death, we asked ourselves, ‘How did that happen?’ We thought we were ready.”
His family knew little about fentanyl, which federal officials say can be deadly in amounts smaller than the tip of a pencil. Neville received a tragic upbringing in the years following his son’s death, and he’s also heard of multiple families whose children died of overdoses after buying pills via Snapchat, often for less than $25.
Neville, who calls Snap’s recent changes “a little plaster on an open wound,” is also part of a California lawsuit against the company. The lawsuit names several teenagers and young adults across the country who died of an accidental overdose. It was presented by the Social Media Victims Law Center, which now represents 28 families whose children bought counterfeit pills via Snapchat. Founding attorney Matthew Bergman said the platform is the only one where their clients’ children have been given fake or deadly pills.
The Drug Enforcement Administration has called fentanyl “the deadliest drug threat to this country,” and Administrator Anne Milgram said social media apps are “the perfect tool for drug delivery.” Youtube. .
Ed Ternan became an activist after his son died at the age of 22 after taking a single pill containing fentanyl which he thought was Percocet. He said he’s seen more action from Snapchat than other platforms since they became aware of the issue in early 2021. But he’d rather see the government work with companies to prosecute retailers than launch a poll. corporate.
“If the carrot works, at some point the stick backfires,” said Ternan, who sits on Snap’s security board. “I want to prevent future deaths. And we do this by raising educational outreach and joining forces with social media companies.”
While the latest data on overdose deaths show encouraging signs, the number of fentanyl-containing pills seized in the United States has more than doubled this year, the DEA said this week. The drug is largely made in illegal laboratories in Mexico, with precursor chemicals purchased from China, authorities said.
For drug traffickers, social media today holds a similar place to phones and pagers of years past, said Jim Carroll, former director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, who is also an unpaid member of the safety council. by Snaps. There’s no data on exactly how much fentanyl is trafficked through social media sites, he said, but Snapchat’s immense popularity among young people could also help explain why retailers use the site and that there are more fentanyl-related deaths. platform, he said. he said.
“You can’t sue the phone company just because it’s the method of communication,” he said. However, “all these social media companies need to do more.”
