The Specifics
Drug sales on social media platforms fall into two major categories: illegal narcotics like heroin, cocaine and fentanyl sold by individuals and criminal syndicates, and controlled substances such as opioid painkillers sold without prescription by shady online “pharmacies.”
Drug dealers hawking illegal narcotics or fake “pharmacies” selling counterfeit medicine take advantage of social media algorithms to target vulnerable populations including recovering addicts, teenagers, and the elderly.
Illegal narcotics — The scale of drug dealing on surface web platforms dwarfs the trade that once took place on dark web sites like Silk Road and Wall Street.
Social media platforms have exponentially expanded the geographic territory available to dealers, enabling customers of virtually any age to buy drugs of any kind from a smartphone.
Controlled Substances - Soaring costs for prescription drugs understandably push people to look for cheaper alternatives online. But there’s a huge risk to this! Of the 35,000 active online pharmacy websites, only about 5% comply with applicable laws and pharmacy standards. Counterfeit products sold online often are manufactured in unsafe conditions, contain little or no active ingredients, and/or are manufactured using dangerous and sometimes deadly substances.
Hundreds of online “pharmacies” purport to be in Canada, but the products they sell—including imitation heart medicine, insulin and steroids—are often made in and shipped from China and India. According to Interpol, some have been found to contain mercury, arsenic, rat poison and/or cement.
The Opioid Epidemic is fueled by both illicit narcotics like heroin, and controlled substances such as fentanyl, morphine and hydrocodone. According to the Centers for Disease Control, almost 450,000 Americans have died from opioid overdoses - both illicit and prescription - between 1998 and 2018. The opioid epidemic has unfurled in three distinct waves
In the first wave, doctors over-prescribed opioids that drug companies falsely claimed were non-addictive.
The second wave began when government efforts to stop doctors from over-prescribing opioids drove users to seek street alternatives.
In the third (and current) wave the trade shifted online. This phase has been marked by significant increases in overdose deaths caused by synthetic opioids - particularly illicitly manufactured fentanyl - that are sold across social media platforms.