DEA’s Alarmist-In-Chief Thinks It’s Time To Start Regulating Social Media Moderation Efforts

If there's one thing nearly everyone on Capitol Hill can agree on, it's that the federal government just isn't interfering enough with social media services. The Democrats think social media services should be regulated because they're allowing too much hate and misinformation to spread. The Republicans think social media services should be regulated because not enough hate and misinformation is being spread. Every so often, for various reasons, lawmakers reach across the aisle and say truly stupid things about dismantling Section 230 immunity.

Then there's the DEA, which is currently headed up by Anne Milgram, who is pretty much just anthropomorphized moral panic. For the past several months, Milgram has been saying increasingly stupider things about fentanyl. Not only is she making the average American dumber every time she opens her mouth, she's doing the same thing to legislators.

Without a doubt, fentanyl is a dangerous drug. Just ask any fainting goat law enforcement officer. The drug possesses the power to kill, is highly addictive, and can apparently be found anywhere illicit drugs are sold.

That it is this deadly has proven problematic for purveyors. In an effort to at least notify abusers of potency or additives, drug cartels have begun engaging in a form of branding, producing multicolored variations that should, theoretically, allow purchasers to get the product they want and the side effects they prefer.

This has been consistently portrayed by Milgram as a nefarious plan to lure/kill children because the colors (even in the stuff that looks like sidewalk chalk!) make the dangerous drug more attractive to the kids. This stupid theory has been endorsed by equally ridiculous lawmakers and debunked by more responsible members of the law enforcement community.

To sell a product, you need customers. Sure, pitching drugs to kids might seem like a good idea, but only if you, like DEA Administrator Milgram, don't think too hard about it. Kids don't have much money. And Milgram insists the plan is (also!) to kill children, which seems like an even more unsustainable business plan than simply selling to children.

It's Milgram's ability to continually drink her own Kool-Aid that has led to this: a suggestion it might be time for the government to punish social media companies because the DEA is so terrible at actually reducing the amount of illicit drugs sold or purchased in this country.

Milgram blamed Snapchat specifically (and the rest of social media implicitly) during a recent interview on Meet the Press:

Milgram told NBC News' Chuck Todd on Meet The Press" that social media is what she calls the last mile."

The border's 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," she said. Social media is also a vital part of the conversation. It is what I call the last mile. 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. And that's what social media's doing."

This is the DEA's latest angle: that the real problem is companies hosting third party content, not the DEA's inability to disrupt the flow of drugs even when it knows exactly how and where they're getting into the country (coming in through the southwest border"). This is Milgram loudly shouting in her own echo chamber, reiterating her the time has come to blame the internet" sentiments she delivered to Congress earlier this year.

The cartels are sophisticated now in realizing that they don't necessarily need to have people standing on street corners pushing their drugs," said former FBI agent Stuart Kaplan.

They can hide behind the social media platforms in a very secure and discreet way and push their drugs out to our younger generation, and almost do it with the immunity of no enforcement whatsoever."

Kaplan explained that Snapchat stands out from other social media platforms because its messages are designed to disappear.

I have two children, they both have smartphones. You will not find Snapchat on either one of their devices," said Kaplan.

While I don't doubt services with ephemeral content are useful to drug dealers and their customers to engage in mutually beneficial transactions, a service that provides only fleeting access to content isn't exactly a replacement for the proverbial street corner, where dealers and their target audience are far less transient. (Equally misplaced is her belief her kids don't have Snapchat on their phones. It's one thing to say that when trashing Snapchat in front of the Senate. It's quite another to know that for a fact.)

All of that leads us to Milgram's latest worst thing: an indirect call for yet-another-someone-else to fight the Drug War for the DEA. Only this time, the target is services used by millions that have, so far, gone largely unmolested by government First Amendment violations.

When asked if there was something the DEA does not have that Congress could give them that would help them address the issue, she said, So we talk a lot with Congress about social media. 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?"

She said Congress was a place to start."

Start" what, exactly? There's no answer here that doesn't raise censorship concerns. What Milgram wants taken down already violates most services' terms of use. Adding the government to the mix only ensures a future filled with constitutional challenges and First Amendment litigation. And if you start fining companies because they aren't taking down drug content fast enough or consistently enough, you'll just ensure drug traffickers will move to platforms not as visible to law enforcement, making this problem more difficult to solve. Law-abiding citizens will be given less access to fewer services and the tech companies most legislators already believe are too rich and powerful will become even more rich and powerful.

That's all on the negative side. As for curbing the spread of fentanyl? It's extremely unlikely any direct regulation of social media moderation would have any measurable effect on supply or demand. This is the DEA deflecting because it has spent several decades in the Drug War business with the only measurable effects being that drugs are cheaper, more potent, and more easily obtained than they were when the DEA began.