DEA Admin.: Social Media Is the Most ‘Dangerous Place’ for a Young Person — ‘We Will See More Deaths’ from Overdoses

On Friday’s broadcast of “CBS This Morning,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram criticized tech companies for their handling of drug dealing on their platform by stating that “107,622 Americans died last year. We will see more deaths this year,” and “there’s no more dangerous place in the United States of America for a young person, 18-45 right now, than social media.”

Milgram stated, “[W]hat’s happening is that social media is — it’s essentially a superhighway. It’s also anonymous, and again, think about, someone doesn’t have to walk to a street corner to buy drugs. You have kids sitting in their bedroom, anyone with a smartphone has a drug dealer with them.”

She added, “So, what the drug dealer does is they go on these — on any of these platforms, Snapchat in particular, we talk about a lot because it’s used frequently, and they do it a lot of different ways. They may go into the comments to people who are going to a concert, and start to target them and say, hey, I’ll be there. Do you want to meet up? They may post emoji lists of drugs.” And “When they go in, they say, I’m going to sell you an OxyContin pill. I’m going to sell you an Adderall. I’m going to sell you a Percocet, as if it were real. And this is the deliberate, calculated treachery of the cartels, they’re lying to you.”

Later, co-host Tony Dokoupil asked, “Are the tech companies allies?”

Milgram responded, “So, I hear you on Snapchat’s statement. 107,622 Americans died last year. We will see more deaths this year, and right now, the prime way — there’s no more dangerous place in the United States of America for a young person, 18-45 right now, than social media.”

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