House Roundtable Hears Testimony About Role of Social Media in Selling Deadly Drugs

Social media, Snapchat in particular, may be making it easier for young people to purchase lethal pills, a congressional roundtable was told on Jan. 25.
Snapchat is known for an app that automatically deletes messages after the receiver reads them, making it possible for drug dealers to take advantage of that feature, witnesses said during the hearing.
Amy Neville, a mother whose teenage son died after taking a counterfeit pill allegedly purchased on Snapchat, told the Committee that her son thought he was getting a prescription painkiller.
“One sunny day in June of 2020, I was preparing to take my 14-year-old son, Alexander, to the orthodontist. I went to his room to wake him, and there he lay, looking like he was just asleep on his bean bag chair—except he wasn’t sleeping. Alex was dead,” the mother said….