Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley reduced Snapchat to smoldering embers at a Senate hearing last week on kids’ startling access to deadly fentanyl on the social media platform.

“This is on their platform, it is there constantly, it is there in volume, and there is currently nothing any parent, any victim, can do about it,” Hawley told the hearing.

The senator noted Minnesota mom Bridgette Norring’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in February explaining in heartbreaking detail how in 2020 her 19-year-old son Devin – suffering from blackout migraines and pain from a cracked molar – went onto Snapchat with another young man to find relief.

Instead, she says, they “were connected to a drug dealer selling to local teens via the platform. …

“In the weeks that followed, we learned that Devin was poisoned by fentanyl. That one pill he took had enough fentanyl in it to kill multiple people. I now also know that social media platforms are one of the primary sources for children, teens and young adults to purchase all types of drugs, and while most of them are not sold as fentanyl, the majority of them contain fentanyl.

“Teens and young adults continue to lose their lives to these deadly counterfeit pills simply because they don’t know the pills may be lethal.”

But it was Snapchat’s alleged response to grieving parents such as Norring that drew Hawley’s flamethrowing at the hearing last week. Norring, he said, testified that Snapchat leaders’ response to a visiting group of parents was threefold:

“‘Number 1, we have no idea this is happening on our platform. Number 2, as parents, you should have been monitoring your child better.’ 

“Charming,” Hawley scowled.

“‘Number 3, you can’t sue us because we’re protected under Section 230.’”

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes online platforms from lawsuits for the third-party content they publish.

“A mother testified recently that she lost her son to fentanyl that he bought off Snapchat,” Hawley posted on X. “What did Snapchat do? It BRAGGED to her about how she couldn’t sue them. 

“Big Tech will think it’s untouchable until we empower parents to SUE.”

The parents’ pain at losing their children has to be indescribable, though Norring tried at the February hearing.

“Parents like myself no longer measure our time by upcoming holidays or the changing seasons. We measure our time by how many weeks, months, or years since our children lost their lives.”

That pain was only exacerbated – not alleviated – by the parents’ meeting with Snapchat leaders, she told senators.

“During that meeting, Snapchat’s executives tried to claim they had no idea this was happening on their platform until [another grieving family] brought it to their attention. Lies. Drug sales have been a growing problem on Snapchat and other social media platforms for years. This fact was widely reported in the media and known to these companies.

“In my opinion, Snapchat is the largest open-air drug market there is. On Snapchat, cartels lie in wait to sell their poison through any means necessary because they know that the platform will help them find new customers. Snapchat recommends children become friends with drug dealers, rewards kids for connecting, and makes sure that there is very little risk of getting caught and charged with a crime.

“After denying that they knew drugs were being sold on their platform, Snapchat’s executives then told us that, as parents, we should have been monitoring our children better, and due to Section 230, we had no power to hold them accountable in court.

“Instead of trying to help make sure this never happens to another family, their focus was making sure we knew there was nothing we could do because they were immune from any legal action. They told us that they are untouchable.”

Norring and others have pressed Congress to act, and several bills have been filed to cut away at illicit online drug sales.

“Parents do not stand a chance at being able to protect our kids on our own,” Norring noted.

And though it’s true that online platforms are immune from lawsuits over content, at least one lawsuit in California is targeting Snapchat’s platform design for allegedly contributing to kids’ fentanyl deaths.

The Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC) in 2022 filed a class action lawsuit representing the parents of “more than 50 teenagers and young adults who overdosed on fentanyl they accessed through Snapchat.”

“They all,” SMVLC founding attorney Matthew P. Bergman has said, “lost a child to fentanyl poisoning from counterfeit drugs obtained through Snap – not through Instagram, not through Tiktok – but through Snap. This isn’t an internet problem. This isn’t a social media problem. This is a Snapchat problem.”

Snap Inc. maintained it is immune in the case, but in January 2024 a judge rejected its motion to dismiss the lawsuit. An appeals court declined to rule in the company’s favor in December, allowing the case to proceed.

“This holding does not preclude Snap from asserting its Section 230 immunity defenses,” the  SMVLC writes, “but simply permits the Plaintiffs to move forward with discovery, review internal company documents, take sworn testimony from Snap personnel, and learn what the company knew about the sale of fentanyl-contaminated drugs on Snapchat, when the company knew about it, and why Snap allows these deadly sales to continue.”

Hawley clearly wants people to be able to sue social media companies.

“I just wanted to point this out so everybody understands it,” he told the hearing last week. “Right now SnapChat and every other Big Tech platform have exactly zero accountability. Zilch.”