EXCLUSIVE — Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and a group of seven Republican senators sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday, urging that the platform do more to prevent the sale of key chemicals used by drug traffickers to produce illicit fentanyl.
Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL), Marco Rubio (R-FL), James Lankford (R-OK), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Roger Wicker (R-MS), and Mike Crapo (R-ID) signed the letter, which intends to shed light on the growing problem in which Chinese vendors are using online networks to market fentanyl analogs and the precursor chemicals to make the drug and then ship them directly to customers in the United States.
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“Social media companies have a responsibility to help prevent dangerous chemicals from getting into the hands of bad actors and Americans of all ages,” the senators wrote in the letter. “The dealers responsible for these sales enthusiastically and openly exploit your platform to conduct illegal activity.”
The Chemical Abstracts Service assigns unique numbers to every chemical substance, including fentanyl precursors. In the letter, the senators included pictures of posts on various social media platforms showing users are able to search CAS registry numbers and find public posts from users attempting to sell the chemicals.
“Fentanyl is killing Americans, and Meta is making it possible through the click of a button for the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate American communities with this illicit drug,” Ernst said in a statement released to the Washington Examiner. “I’m demanding Zuckerburg close this loophole to stop the flow of deadly fentanyl and protect American lives.”
Earlier this summer, Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Anne Milgram said various social media companies are not cooperating with the agency to prevent the sales of fentanyl and disrupt the chemical supply chain.
“We’ve been in conversations with the social media companies. The deputy attorney general convened all of us in April of this year and made it very clear, No. 1, 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,’” Milgram said during an appearance on Meet the Press.
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Experts highlighted the problems during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee this past February in which they discussed how a “superhighway of drugs” is spilling into the U.S. via social media.
The senators also demand Zuckerberg respond to a variety of questions by no later than Nov. 17 in an attempt to understand how the platform intends to crack down on the sale of these chemicals that are fueling the fentanyl epidemic. No Democratic senators signed the letter.