By Paul Martin
I arrived home from New York late Saturday night and walked straight to bed, exhausted. It was another trip—more meetings with grieving activist parents. I started a SubStack blog about these heroes, Monuments of Suffering.
I woke the following day and noticed my latest New Yorker magazine, then the back cover.
The profanity that left my mouth can’t be shared here.
A few days earlier, I had the honor of finally meeting Amy Neville in person. She was a central figure in my journey into this fight. Her son Alexander died of fentanyl poisoning on June 23, 2020. He was 14. She is spearheading a lawsuit against Snap Inc.—over 60 claims in an L.A. courthouse, seeking unspecified damages on behalf of dozens of youths who died.
I grabbed my iPhone and hit record. Amy mentioned Snapchat’s shameless Less social media, #MoreSnapchat Superbowl ad.
I remember the slimy commercial. I watched live with disbelief. But then I didn’t. I know these types. These wonton campaigns, like the magazine back cover, are a must for them. They’ve become expert at distracting us from their complicity in countless deaths—that they design their social media app precisely to addict children, conceal the nefarious acts of drug dealers and pedophiles, and then deceive the public with cute, agitprop distortion campaigns.
(I’m the one who booed.)
According to a January 2024 UCLA study, 22 high school students die each week from fentanyl poisoning, more than any mass school shooting in history.
Every. Single. Week
At a hearing in Washington DC earlier this year, former Chief of Operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration and United Against Fentanyl Advisory Board Member Ray Donovan testified, “Gone are the days when you go to a dark alley and meet up with a dealer. Now the dealers are online in that space.”
Snapchat leads the way.
With the help of Snap Inc., any pharmaceutical with a famous brand name and demand—Adderall, Valium, Suboxone, Xanax, Percocet—is now available and can be delivered to your door, pretty much like DoorDash.
I now refer to Snapchat as snapdash.
The children don’t realize most illicit pills today are counterfeit, laced with lethal amounts of fentanyl.
Why are they laced with fentanyl? The predominate Mexican cartels—Sinaloa Cartel and Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion—are two of the largest criminal groups in the world. They saw a business opportunity about a decade ago. The U.S. has a mental health crisis. Tens of millions use narcotics illegally. Why use the expense stuff when you can use benign powder with a tiny dash of fentanyl? Users can’t see the difference when they purchase a pill, and a fentanyl “high” is said to be the most potent and most exhilarating. Of course, the problem is fentanyl is up to 100 times more potent than heroin. There’s a tiny margin for error. We all metabolize substances differently. And if you’re not a user who has built up a tolerance, two milligrams of fentanyl can be lethal and has been, in countless cases, as was the case with Alexander Neville.
Amy ended up meeting with Snap’s co-founder and CEO, Evan Spiegel. Snap followed up with an official statement: “We are grateful for the opportunity to listen to families who have shared their stories and offered feedback on how we can help keep our community safe. We have met with Mrs. Neville on two occasions in addition to communicating on the phone and via email, and we would never attempt to minimize her important story.”
This bile isn’t surprising. Spiegel is quite a piece of work. I won’t post some of his frat-buddy talk on our website because it’s X-rated. If you want a comprehensive story on Snap and its complicity in the fentanyl crisis, this piece by Paul Solotarof, one of the most impressive investigative journalists out there and a Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award finalist, is it.
Snap Inc. is a $15 billion company today. They aggressively scheme with million-dollar Superbowl commercials and magazine ads to conceal their nefarious campaign to own the hearts and minds of our nation’s children through the medium of their cute yellow app.
As far as we know, Snap Inc. has no plan to change its disappearing messages and other features, which is a dream come true for fentanyl dealers. Bill Bodner, former head of the Los Angeles division of the DEA, agrees: “I spent five years trying to get something out of Snapchat. Not once did they bring something useful.”
Stopping Snap and saving the lives of our nation’s children—and preventing the worst nightmare of countless parents—requires a movement. Only that will force them to enact the changes to their platform that will save lives—to put the lives of children over profits.
That’s why I launched United Against Fentanyl this year.
Please consider joining the fight.
