KING COUNTY, Wash. — A warning to parents from the Drug Enforcement Administration: international drug traffickers are going after your kids on social media.
The haul the feds just took in as they work to get the deadly drug fentanyl off Seattle’s streets is staggering.
The 2021 death toll from drug overdoses in the U.S. stands at 100,000.
Sixty-four percent of those deaths are from pills laced with tiny amounts of fentanyl.
This is a top priority of the DEA.
But they are dealing with a formidable foe. Drug traffickers are using social media, even emojis, to turn young people into drug users.
This is just a part of the loot the Seattle office of the DEA seized in a campaign that ended Tuesday — 800,000 counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl, a drug responsible for killing 64,000 Americans this year alone. That is a full 64% of all overdose deaths.
“Approximately every five minutes,” said Frank Tarentino, “someone is overdosing.”
Tarentino is the special agent in charge of the DEA’s Seattle office. He says the days of users meeting drug dealers in back alleys are fading. Much of that dealing is happening online.
“What we’re seeing today through social media platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook is that these traffic networks can reach a greater audience,” Tarentino said.
The DEA has traced the illegal fentanyl drug trade to Wuhan, China, the source of the chemical ingredients. Those chemicals are then shipped to drug cartels in Mexico, which mass-produce the fake pills. Then they are sent to Seattle’s streets.
Tarentino says the dealers use social media platforms and emojis to entice young people, to create a secret language their parents and other adults might not understand.
“It’s almost like a secret code,” said Tarentino.
A “secret code” that Tarentino says parents like him need to learn to crack.
“I would encourage and urge every parent to have a really honest conversation with their children about these dangers and (…) about the risks,” he says.
That’s so their children don’t end up here at the medical examiner’s office.
Tarentino is hoping that message reaches the streets, too. Even one pill laced with fentanyl, just one, can and does kill.
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