FAMILIES of teens who died after overdosing on drugs bought via Snapchat and other social media platforms have called for tech firms to do more to address the problem.

Sam Chapman, part of a group that staged a protest in front of the Snapchat headquarters in Santa Monica yesterday, said his son died after consuming a pill, laced with the extremely powerful opioid fentanyl, purchased through the platform in February last year.

“I am here today to warn people about the dangers of social media, delivering drugs and other criminal acts into the lives of our families, through our children,” said the 57-year-old.

His son Sammy would have celebrated his 18th birthday last weekend.

Chapman described the horrific scene of finding his son dead on the floor in his bedroom, in what he called the “fentanyl death pose”.

“He stopped breathing and fell backwards in his chair and vomited, and he choked on his own vomit… It is a common way of going.”

Of the 107,000 overdose deaths recorded in the United States last year, 70% were caused by “fentanyl poisoning”, which is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45, according to the groups backing the protest yesterday.

Chapman said a drug dealer contacted his son on Snapchat and sent him a “colourful drug menu with pictures”.

“At the bottom it said that he delivered. And so he connected with our son and delivered the drugs to our home after we were asleep, like it was a pizza.”

Like the family members of other victims, Chapman is calling on Snapchat and other social media platforms geared toward young people to take stronger action against drug sales.

“We have been working tirelessly to help combat this national crisis by eradicating illicit drug dealers from our platform,” said a Snapchat spokesman.

“We use advanced technology to proactively detect and shut down drug dealers who try to abuse our platform, and block search results for dangerous drug-related content.”

But Chapman said current tools do not work as dealers use emojis and code words that are not blocked.

The Victims of Illicit Drugs (Void) is demanding United States law to be updated so social networks are held liable for what happens to their users on their platforms.

“If you walk in a grocery store and you slip and fall, you can sue them,” said Void president Jaime Puerta.

“The law was written in 1996. The legislators had no idea of where the internet would be today.” – AFP, June 14, 2022.