The opioid epidemic in our country, and in particular the rise in fatal fentanyl overdoses, has devastated the lives of far too many. Fueled by the importation of precursor chemicals from China to drug cartels in Mexico, fentanyl rapidly swept over the country to create a public health crisis that has been classified as a national security emergency. 

Tragically, many of these deaths occur from taking a single counterfeit pill disguised as a legitimate prescription medication – containing fentanyl. And young people, who sometimes experiment with prescription pills such as Xanax and Percocet, are especially vulnerable.

As the epidemic rapidly expanded throughout the country, Snap and numerous other online and offline communities faced a serious challenge. Some criminal drug dealers exploited Snapchat to prey on Snapchatters, promoting the dangerous sale of illegal, counterfeit drugs. Our Community Guidelines prohibit the sale or promotion of illegal drugs, and we unequivocally abhor this criminal behavior and the tragic outcomes that have resulted.  

In response to these issues, we promptly joined the fight against the fentanyl epidemic.  More about our efforts since then is described below. But it is important to note that Snap continues to collaborate with law enforcement, other government officials, medical professionals, parents, educators, advocacy organizations, and others to combat this national public health crisis.

As the U.S. saw an increase in fentanyl overdoses in 2021, Snap fought back to prevent criminal drug dealers from abusing Snapchat. This includes developing and deploying technology to proactively detect illicit drug content and drug-related activity, increasing our support for law enforcement investigations, making proactive referrals to law enforcement in the hopes of prompting an investigation, and raising awareness of the dangers of fentanyl directly with Snapchatters in our app.

In February 2021, Snap began working with Song for Charlie—to develop ways that Snap could help educate Snapchatters about the dangers of fentanyl-laced pills. 

In October 2021, Snap provided a survey to the Snapchat community on some of the efforts it had undertaken so far to address the problem.

Building on our internal efforts, in early 2022, we reached out to Meta to explore sharing patterns and signals of illicit drug-related content and activity across our platforms. Three years later, that program continues to serve as a centerpiece among tech companies.  It led to our ongoing collaboration with the U.S. Department of State and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, which have all come together to form The Alliance to Prevent Drug Harms. The Alliance has three goals:  

• Cross-industry best practice-sharing to disrupt illicit and harmful online drug activity

• Awareness-raising and educational efforts — both online and off — to prevent non-medical use of synthetic drugs

• Cross-sector collaboration on campaigns and tools for overdose prevention and support for those seeking treatment options
  

At Snap, we’ve been working to prevent the abuse of our service by criminals seeking to distribute illicit drugs, including counterfeit pills, in three main areas: 

• Technology & Platform Safety; 

• Supporting Law Enforcement; and 

• Education and Awareness-Raising Efforts.

Snapchat is designed to bring people closer to the people who matter most to them in real life by communicating privately, just like with face-to-face conversations or by talking on the telephone. 

Proactive Detection Tools: We have been working for years to remove drug dealers who abuse Snapchat, including by using advanced technologies.  

• We deploy and routinely improve technology that helps us preemptively find and shut down dealers’ accounts. 

• The advanced models we have developed help us proactively identify the vast majority of detected illicit drug activity, allowing us to take this content down before a user even makes a report. 

• Our proactive detection is informed by data shared by law enforcement, including the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), relating to drug slang and emojis that dealers typically use. 

• We have also updated our machine learning tools to improve our already robust efforts to proactively identify images, words, emojis, and other likely indicators of drug-related accounts and attempted drug transactions. 

Quick Action on Reports: Our most recent Transparency Report shows that our team quickly enforces against drug content on Snapchat.

Blocking Searches: We block search results for a wide range of drug-related terms and redirect Snapchatters to resources from experts about the dangers of fentanyl.  

Coordinating with Other Platforms: Knowing that drug dealers use a range of services to communicate, we work with experts and other tech companies to share patterns and signals of drug-related content and activity – allowing us to improve our proactive detection efforts. 

Our Law Enforcement Operations team is dedicated to promptly responding to law enforcement inquiries and helping bring criminals to justice. We maintain strong relationships with law enforcement to help them take swift and appropriate action in response to illegal activity on our platform.

Our key priorities include:

• Expanding our Team: Between 2019 and 2024, the Law Enforcement Operations team grew more than 200%. We work to respond to valid legal requests quickly and prioritize emergency disclosure requests (which involve imminent danger of death or serious injury) to help ensure that our response matches the urgency of these situations. 

• Proactive Escalations: In situations where we believe there is an imminent threat to life in the United States and certain other countries, we proactively escalate the matter to law enforcement. We also regularly make proactive referrals relating to illicit drug activity to the DEA. After we disable accounts for drug-related violations of our Community Guidelines, we retain the violating content for an extended period in the event that law enforcement wants to follow up. 

• Supporting Legislation: We worked with members of the U.S. Senate on bipartisan federal legislation, The Cooper Davis Act, that paves the way for greater cooperation between social networking companies and law enforcement to combat fentanyl. 

We are committed to educating Snapchatters and the general public about the dangers of fentanyl. Over the past few years, we have promoted in-app educational videos and news content warning about the dangers of counterfeit pills and directed Snapchatters to resources from trusted experts. This is an ongoing effort and has included:

• In-app Content to Raise Awareness with Snapchatters: We have partnered with Song for Charlie, a leading fentanyl awareness organization, to run PSAs and created special programming with Good Luck America, our original news show. You can see an interview with Ed Ternan, the founder of Song for Charlie, here or here.  

  • Good Luck America is a short documentary-style original program from Snapchat that focuses on U.S. politics. It is hosted by Peter Hamby, Snap’s head of news and a former political reporter at CNN. The series reaches millions of viewers on the platform.  

• Dedicated In-app Education Portal: We also maintain an in-app tool, Heads Up, that surfaces educational content from experts to Snapchatters if they try to search for drug-related content or a range of terms related to the fentanyl crisis. 

  • Our expert partners include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA), Shatterproof, Truth Initiative, and the SAFE Project.

• National Public Awareness Efforts: In 2022, we began working with the Ad Council to develop an unprecedented national public awareness campaign about the dangers of fentanyl. The campaign now includes other leading tech platforms and is focused on reaching parents and teens where they are to get “The Real Deal on Fentanyl.” Separately, we also served as a founding partner of National Fentanyl Awareness Day, and we continue to work alongside public health experts, law enforcement, and parent and family groups on such awareness efforts.

Snap is committed to continuing its efforts to work alongside law enforcement, other government officials, medical professionals, parents, educators, and advocacy organizations to eradicate criminal drug dealers’ abuse of Snapchat, as well as continuing to raise awareness about the devastating impacts of the fentanyl crisis.  Thankfully, progress is being made.  The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics data shows drug use among young people has declined, as have drug deaths for all ages.