US signs agreement with 3 social media giants aimed at preventing distribution of synthetic drugs

UNITED NATIONS — The United States signed a memorandum with several of the world's biggest social media companies on Thursday aimed at preventing the use of their platforms for the distribution of synthetic drugs.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told a signing ceremony that ''t echnology companies have a critical role to play in both stopping the illegal manufacturing, trafficking and marketing of synthetic drugs, and just as importantly, educating the public.''

The Alliance to Prevent Drug Harms is a joint effort of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and Meta which owns Facebook and WhatsApp , X and Snap Inc., the owner of the photo sharing app Snapchat.

The U.S. Mission said the signing parties will collaborate to ''disrupt'' illegal drug activities online and ''amplify public awareness of the dangers of synthetic drug misuse.''

Thomas-Greenfield said at the ceremony at the U.S. Mission that synthetic drug use is an ''international crisis'' that ''no one government and no one sector can tackle alone.''

''These criminals have adeptly used online platforms, social media, e-commerce, search engines and messaging apps to coordinate their illicit activities,'' she said.

Neither Thomas-Greenfield nor the social media representatives elaborated on the specific actions they will take to reduce online synthetic drug distribution as part of the Prevent Alliance, though Snap global platform safety chief Jacqueline Beauchere detailed the company's existing efforts.

Beauchere said Snap — which reaches 90% of 13- to 24-year-olds in the United States — has sought to make its platform a ''hostile environment'' for drug distributors by using technology that can ''proactively detect illicit drug content,'' making referrals to law enforcement, and ''raising awareness'' of the risks of drug use with users in the app.

Meta trust and safety vice president Nell McCarthy said the company's platform can help combat the opioid epidemic as a place where families of victims, people in recovery, and organizations fighting stigma can connect..

The Prevent Alliance is a result of talks that began at the U.N. General Assembly's annual gathering of world leaders in September 2023, Thomas-Greenfield said.

The U.S, mission said the partnership's objectives align with the U.S. State Department's Global Coalition to Address Synthetic Drug Threats, a multilateral effort to prevent illicit synthetic drug distribution launched by Secretary of State Antony Blinken last July.

''Whether it is companies that are involved in production or distribution, marketing or financial networks whose platforms may be abused for the movement of these illicit drugs, everybody has to play a role,'' U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Maggie Nardi said Thursday.

Delphine Schantz, head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime's New York office, put illicit drug use into a global perspective.

According to the 2024 World Drug Report, 292 million people used drugs in 2022 — a 20% increase from the last decade, Schantz said.

The report estimated 60 million of those people used opioids. In the same year, nearly 82,000 people died from opioid use in the United States, representing a 24-fold increase since 2010.