As the fentanyl crisis, a very powerful opioid, reaches heights in the United States, the FBI is looking into Snapchat’s role in the illegal sale and distribution of this drug.
Snapchat in the sights of the FBI. As part of a broad investigation into the opioid crisis in the United States, US federal agencies are looking into Snapchat’s role in the sale of fentanyl, an opioid one hundred times more powerful than morphine.
According to the American media Bloomberg, officers interviewed parents whose children died after buying fentanyl on Snapchat. The victims were primarily looking for painkillers that do not require a doctor’s prescription. Investigators are currently trying to access the accounts of the victims to find the suppliers of the drugs.
In the United States, the number of teenage overdoses involving illegally manufactured fentanyl increased by 182% between 2019 and 2021, according to the statistics Centers for Disease Prevention and Control. Snapchat is a platform particularly used by dealers because it allows you to send ephemeral content. This avoids keeping any trace or proof of illegal sale.
For its part, Snapchat assures Bloomberg deleting more than 400,000 accounts that posted drug-related content in recent months. The company adds “work for years with law enforcement to combat illegal activity on its platform”.
Several previous complaints
This January 25, the situation of Snapchat was the subject of a round table organized by the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives. Heard during the debate, Laura Marquez-Garrett, lawyer for the Social Media Victims Law Center, denounced the responsibility of the platform.
This isn’t the first time Snapchat has come under scrutiny on this topic. In 2022, dozens of American families sued the platform for aiding and abetting the sale of fentanyl to their children. The families also denounce the slow reactions of Snapchat and its weak mobilization to remove drug traffickers from its platform.
