Dealers’ paradise? How social media became a storefront for deadly fake pills

Coco loved being the life of the party — cracking jokes, doing pranks and making people laugh, her mom, Julianna Arnold, recalled recently.

“Her favorite pastime was fashion,” Arnold said. “She didn’t like looking at magazines or going to fancy stores, but preferred to make her own creations from used clothing she would find at thrift stores.... And they always looked fabulous on her.”

In 2022, two weeks after she turned 17, Coco left home just outside New York City to meet with a dealer she’d messaged through Instagram who promised to sell her Percocet. She never made it home. She was found dead the next day, two blocks from the address that the guy had provided her.

Whatever the dealer gave Coco, her mother said, was not Percocet. It was a fake pill laced with fentanyl, which can be lethal in a dose as small as the tip of a pencil.

Fentanyl overdoses have become a leading cause of death for minors in the last five years or so, even as overall drug use has dropped slightly. In a 2022 analysis of fentanyl-laced prescription pills, the DEA found that six out of 10 contained a potentially lethal dose of the drug.

And social media, where tainted, fake prescription drugs can be obtained with just a few clicks, is a big part of the problem. Experts, law enforcement and children’s advocates say companies like Snap, TikTok, Telegram and Meta Platforms, which owns Instagram, are not doing enough to keep children safe.

A few taps away

The stories of these victims often play out similarly: The kids hear you can get pills on social media. A few taps later and then a package arrives. They retreat to the sanctity of their bedroom and take a pill. Fifteen minutes later, they’re dead. No one even knows until the next morning.

Paul DelPonte, executive director and CEO of the National Crime Prevention Council, likened this crisis to a Johnson & Johnson incident in 1982 when seven people died due to Tylenol bottles that had been tampered with. In that case, J&J recalled all bottles and stopped production until they discovered the source of the problem.

“As a result, we now have tamper-resistant caps on over-the-counter medicines and in other products. That’s corporate responsibility,” he said. “For years, social media companies have known this has been happening, yet they continue to operate their platforms without any significant changes.”

While data on the prevalence of drug sales on social platforms is hard to come by, the National Crime Prevention Council estimates 80% of teen and young adult fentanyl poisoning deaths can be traced to some social media contact.

In a sweeping 2023 report on the problem, Colorado’s attorney general called the availability of fentanyl and other illicit substances online “staggering.”

“Due to their ubiquity, convenience, and lack of regulation, social media platforms have become a major venue for drug distribution,” the report said. “Where once a teen might have had to seek out a street dealer, hassle friends, or learn to navigate the dark web to access illicit drugs, young people can now locate drug dealers using their smartphones — with the relative ease of ordering food delivery or calling a ride-share service.”

Accidental overdoses in the U.S. have decreased slightly each year since 2021 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. DelPonte attributes this in part to more education and awareness about the issue. Among young people ages 0 to 19, there were 1,622 overdose deaths in 2021, then 1,590 in 2022, and 1,511 last year.

The decline, DelPonte said, is “very small.”

A decade ago, people looking to buy illicit drugs online would visit the dark web. But this was quickly eclipsed by social media and messaging platforms’ rise. Using popular social media sites, encrypted chats, legitimate payment and shipping services, dealers moved into the light. Social platforms say they are constantly working to address the issue, while law enforcement has made some inroads.

Last May, for instance, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s “Operation Last Mile,” targeting Mexico’s Sinaloa and Jalisco Cartels, led to 3,337 arrests and the seizure of nearly 44 million fentanyl pills and other deadly drugs. More than 1,100 associated cases involved social media apps and encrypted communications platforms, the DEA said.

On Instagram, as recently as this summer, a simple hashtag search for popular prescription drugs brought up numerous results with accounts offering to sell illicit pills to anyone looking. Many accounts directed users to Snapchat or Telegram, where experts say encryption and alleged lax moderation make it even easier to engage in illegal activity. Money is sent through payment platforms and the drugs can be delivered by mail, DelPonte said.

Meta, for its part, has made it more difficult to search for drugs on its platform in recent weeks.

‘Never in a million years’

Mikayla Brown lost her son Elijah, who went by Eli, to a suspected fentanyl overdose in 2023, two weeks after his 15th birthday. Eli loved skateboarding, video games and cooking. His favorite was spicy Cajun pasta his mom made and he just started to get into cooking himself.

Eli began experimenting with marijuana in high school and he was going through what seemed like a phase many teenagers go through, his mom said. The family decided he’d go live with his biological father about three hours away in Woodland Hills in Los Angeles, to try to get a handle on what Brown called Eli’s “rebellion era.”

Brown said the family “never in a million years” would have thought he was getting into anything more dangerous than that. There was one exception, about a year before he passed away, his mom found him acting funny and he admitted to having taken Xanax, a prescription anti-anxiety drug.

On a September evening last year, Eli arrived home from a friend’s house, had dinner with his dad and stayed up late to watch a movie.

His father sent him to bed around “2 a.m., I guess,” Brown said. “And then when his alarm went off in the morning to wake up Eli for school he found him in his room...”

Eli was unresponsive. His cause of death was accidental fentanyl overdose. But he wasn’t trying to buy fentanyl, he was looking for Xanax, and, like Coco, ended up with tainted pills that killed him.

Until recently, a search for #Xanax on Instagram led to a warning page specifying that “This may be associated with the sale of drugs” and that the “sale, purchase of trade of illicit drugs can cause harm to yourself and others and is illegal in most countries.” A blue “Get help” link directed users to federal substance abuse resources. Underneath that link, users could click to “see results anyway.” After it was pointed out by the AP, the company quickly removed the ability to “see results anyway” for location-specific hashtags such as #xanaxdallas or #xanaxchicago. Later, it also removed the “see results” option for other drugs such as cocaine and Adderall, among others.

Meta also said it investigated accounts shared by The Associated Press and concluded they were not drug dealers, but financial scam artists based in Africa pretending to sell drugs locally.

Meta says it blocks and filters “hundreds” of terms associated with illicit drug sales and links to recovery and substance abuse resources when possible. But drug dealers and other bad actors constantly shift their strategies, coming up with fresh ways to avoid detection.

David Decary-Hetu, a professor at the School of Criminology at the University of Montreal, said Meta, in particular, has been “quite effective” in targeting people who sell drugs on its social platforms. But, he added, “it doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen.”

In a statement, Meta said drug dealers “are criminals who stop at nothing to sell their dangerous products. This is a challenge that spans across platforms, industries, and communities, and it requires all of us working together to address it.”

The company added that it works with law enforcement and proactively took down 2 million pieces of content, 99.7% before they were reported in the first three months of 2024.

“Our hearts go out to the families suffering at the hands of these criminals and we are committed to working with others to prevent these tragedies,” Meta added.

A persistent problem

Coco’s mother had many discussions with her daughter about being careful online.

The teen was in therapy — social media really affected her and she developed anxiety and depression, Arnold said. She frequently checked Coco’s social media and limited her time on Snapchat to 15 minutes per day.

“She knew about a lot of this stuff. We had talked about it. But then when this came up on Instagram, you know, I wasn’t checking and I couldn’t check all of her direct messages. It’s hard to know as a parent, no matter how on top of it you are,” she said.

Coco’s death is still under investigation, Arnold said.

Arnold said it took five months to remove the dealer’s profile from Instagram. Occasionally, she checks to see if he’s there under another name.

“I typed in something that I thought maybe could work, you know, based on what his previous handle had been. And there he was. He was back up under a different a different handle,” she said. “But I recognized his photo and I reported it to the police. And now again, it’s taking months to get it taken down.”

Experts often single out Snapchat as a particularly dangerous platform, something the company vehemently disagrees with. In October 2022, a group of parents who say their children bought fentanyl from drug dealers they met through Snapchat sued the company for wrongful death and negligence, calling it a “haven for drug trafficking.”

“Despite Snap promoting and portraying Snapchat as a ‘goofy’ app for kids to use to send each other silly pictures, its known common use is as an ‘open-air drug market,’” the lawsuit claims. Snapchat’s role in illicit drug sales to teens, it continues, “was the foreseeable result of the designs, structures, and policies Snap chose to implement to increase its revenues.”

The vast majority of fentanyl deaths among young people, the lawsuit says, involve kids who don’t know they are ingesting fentanyl. Rather, they are buying what they believe is marijuana, MDMA or prescription drugs like OxyContin. In January, a judge ruled that the lawsuit could move to trial.

It’ll be yet another test for Section 230, a 1996 law that generally exempts internet companies from liability for material users post on their networks.

In a statement, Snap said it is “heartbroken by the fentanyl epidemic and are deeply committed to the fight against it.”

“We’ve invested in advanced technology to detect and remove illicit drug-related content, work extensively with law enforcement helping to bring dealers to justice, and continue to raise awareness and evolve our service to help keep our community safe. Criminals have no place on Snapchat,” said Jacqueline Beauchere, Global Head of Platform Safety at the company.

While Snap wouldn’t comment on the lawsuit itself, the company argues its design actually makes it more difficult for bad actors to operate. For instance, the company says, it doesn’t allow people to get messages from people they haven’t added as friends or have a phone contact, and location sharing is off by default.

Regulatory remedies?

Advocates are hoping that regulation of tech companies could help address the problem, as it might help with other dangers kids face on social media. In July, the Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act, legislation designed to protect children from dangerous online content. It still awaits a vote in the House. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., meanwhile, introduced a bill that would require social media companies to report illicit fentanyl, methamphetamine and fake pill activity occurring on their platforms to law enforcement.

“We must do more at the federal level to combat the flow of fentanyl into our communities, and it starts by holding social media companies accountable for their part in facilitating illicit drug sales,” Shaheen said.

But for parents like Arnold, Brown and others who already lost their children to overdoses, it is too late.

“Social media companies have the ability to make their platforms drug-free zones,” DelPonte said. “Instead, they keep evading the meaningful changes to keep the public safe.”