Some parents are accusing social media app Snapchat of helping their kids find easy access to drugs. These parents have filed a lawsuit against Snapchat and its parent company SNAP. Amy Neville’s 14-year-old son allegedly used the app to connect with a drug dealer who sold him pills that were laced with fentanyl. The latter is a powerful narcotic that is 100x stronger than morphine and it doesn’t take much to kill an unsuspecting user.
Neville, talking about kids who have died after buying pills containing fentanyl from dealers via Snapchat said, “And they’re gone because apps like Snapchat…make these dangers accessible to our kids.” More than 50 parents have filed what NBC News calls “a string of lawsuits” that say Snapchat “ignored the harms its product was causing users” and said that the company turned the reins of the app over to drug dealers.
Matthew Bergman, an attorney with the Social Media Victims Law Center, is representing several of the grieving parents and noted that calls continue to come into his office. “I had no idea how pervasive this problem was, Bergman said.” The attorney added that he had just received calls from seven more families that had lost children to drugs purchased through dealers that were supposedly discovered on Snapchat.
Bergman points out that while other social media platforms have unintentionally hosted drug dealers, certain features of Snapchat make it more favorable for drug transactions. One is the disappearing messages feature that allows messages to vanish. And the Snap Map can be used to find the exact location of dealers.
NBC’s Seattle affiliate KING-TV filmed one overdose survivor as he used his phone and the Snapchat app to find a dealer showing how easy the whole process is. The dealer he found was willing to deliver the narcotics to the survivor’s home. “It’s pretty much Amazon for drugs,” he said.
In a statement given Snapchat said that it works closely with law enforcement and “uses cutting-edge technology to…find and shut down drug dealers’ accounts…block search results for drug-related terms.” It also redirects such searches to resources that explain to Snapchat users about the dangers of fentanyl. Snapchat also helped produce a public service announcement about the dangers of fentanyl.
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