DEA Administrator Blames Social Media For Fentanyl Crisis

While many Americans are quick to excoriate social media for creating or exacerbating societal ills of various types, one Biden administration official is taking such criticism to an entirely new level.

Drug Enforcement Agency Administrator Anne Milgram is now blaming platforms like Twitter and Facebook for the fentanyl-related deaths of thousands of Americans each year.

Even as Republican lawmakers and conservative pundits continue to point the finger at President Joe Biden’s lax immigration policies for allowing dangerous drugs to flood across the nation’s southern border, Milgram insisted during an interview over the weekend that social media sites represent “the last mile” for delivery of synthetic opioids. 

Although she acknowledged that the border is “an important part of this conversation because most of the fentanyl that we see coming into the United States is coming in through the southwest border,” Milgram quickly shifted her focus to social media sites.

“Because what the cartels need — they’re selling the deadliest poison we’ve ever seen — they need that to … be able to expand and sell more, they need to be able to reach people at massive rates,” she said. “And that’s what social media’s doing.”

Milgram went on to call for more government intervention in the type of content allowed to be shared online.

“We have not, until recently, gotten nearly as much cooperation as we need,” she said of leading social media companies. 

Referencing a meeting with a top Justice Department official earlier this year, Milgram said that a central component of the discussion was “that the companies have to comply with their own terms of service, which say this is illegal. You cannot be selling fake pills. You cannot be selling drugs on social media websites.”

Asserting that Congress is “a place to start” in the executive branch’s push to further regulate social media, she also called for law enforcement to be granted additional authority to review these companies’ internal data. 

“So we talk a lot with Congress about social media,” Milgram concluded. “We talk a lot about the need for these platforms — essentially, one of the main ways we see Americans dying right now is through social media, the purchase of pills, fake pills on social media. So, again, if we’re after, how do we stop 110,000 Americans from dying?”