It’s been a month, you’ve saved up your dough.
Come to me, 100 percent Peruvian snow.
I’m going to try and order some drugs online.
How do you guys usually sell your drugs?
Snapchat and Instagram.
You’ve kind of got to be like an Instagram influencer.
If I put a picture up and no one liked it,
I’d be a bit wounded, wouldn’t I?
Until I get the answers
and I find out who is responsible for my daughter’s death,
I won’t stop. I won’t stop.
I can see why people take the law into their own hands, as well.
Drugs have never been more marketed than they are now.
From glossy business cards, raffles,
fluorescent, branded pills on websites with menus,
drug dealing has come a long way from a bloke saying,
“Weed, cocaine, MDMA” on a street corner.
Now it’s all about Snapchat, Instagram.
Since this industry exploded onto social media,
drug dealers have brazenly used public accounts
on Snapchat and Instagram to shot their wares.
It’s easy isn’t it? Anyone can do it.
You can sit at home and make an account.
The most recent European drug report referred to this as
an “Uberization” of the drug market,
with it now being easier to order a gram of gak than a pizza.
But with this ease of access and glossy marketing
has come a dark outcome:
a sharp uptake in drug use in children as young as 10.
It’s their choice to get the drugs, at the end of the day.
The world has been hit by a wave of high-profile deaths of children
who have taken class A drugs, such as Ecstasy.
And many have been found to have bought those drugs
on Instagram and Snapchat.
So I searched the apps to see how easy it is to buy drugs.
So I’m going to try and order some drugs online.
And to do this I’m going to set up my own Instagram account
and Snapchat account.
And I’m going to see if I can add dealers on it and basically pick up.
So I’ve chosen some quite young-looking pictures.
The mask was quite recent to be fair.
And I’ve tried to put quite childish captions beneath.
Screams “Youth.”
And I’m going to see if they ask me how old I am,
or care how old I am.
And I’m also going to try and see how quick it is
to get a response from them.
I might type in “Ecstasy” and see...
what comes up.
Oh my God, OK.
So there’s Mastercard pills,
mushrooms,
acid,
MDMA,
pills,
Trump pills.
There’s also some Supreme pills here.
This guy is shotting crystal meth.
Oh God, it doesn’t look very appetizing.
I found this account, which is 104 dealers that are using Snapchat,
that you can contact if you just type in their name.
So it’s basically a drug dealer’s directory.
And Snapchat is a predominantly under-18 market.
So it’s kind of unsurprizing
that a lot of kids come across drugs on Snapchat,
because they literally use it all the time.
I’ve just got a message
from someone called ‘Plug Life.’
He just goes, “Hi.”
“Hey how are you?”
Oh, I keep asking how they are.
Oh God, it’s popping off.
He wants to post it.
I guess, in a way, that kind of makes it less intimidating
for kids to buy drugs.
All they need is an address and a Snapchat account.
OK, “I hope we are to proceed immediately.”
He’s a bit aggy.
I don’t want to order off this guy.
I got a message from this guy being like,
“Yo, what’s your order and where are you located?”
And I said, “Hey, I’m in London, is that OK?”
And he goes, “Yeah, what’s your order
and what’s your address for drop off?”
That literally took me five minutes
and I could already be going to pick up some drugs.
With buying drugs on social media
being so fast and simple,
I wondered whether the platforms had also made it easier
to operate as a dealer in the first place.
So I organised to meet a young dealer
who had recently got into selling cocaine and weed on social media.
How did you first get into it?
All my friends are doing it, so I just got a little bit of stuff
and went from there really.
Got an account without my name on it, obviously, you know,
so people would message me on Snapchat or Instagram.
I’ve been doing it for years and I’ve never been arrested or anything.
Do you think that’s a bit risky,
because it’s kind of just out there for everyone to see?
I know the risks, but if you want money
then you’ve got to do it, haven’t you?
Nothing worth having comes easy, does it?
What percentage of your customers come through social media?
A good 90 percent, at least.
Wow, that’s quite a lot.
Yeah, it’d probably be more, mainly all on social media now.
So tell me the process, how it works.
Well, I wake up in the morning, go buy my stuff, whatever.
And then put a picture of it on Instagram.
People will like it and stuff, they’ll DM me,
and then it goes from there really.
Just whatever they want, I’ve got it, haven’t I?
Then they’ll come meet me and I’ll sell it to them.
When you post a pic and it gets loads of likes,
does it feel kind of like a holiday pic?
Does it feel good?
If I put a picture up and no one liked it,
I’d be a bit wounded, wouldn’t I?
Have you kind of got to be like an Instagram influencer to progress?
Obviously, I suppose if you already got a big following
and people trust you then it’s better to start like that.
I don’t necessarily use hashtags and stuff.
It’s just more through people liking my pictures
and then other people see it.
But the picture doesn’t stay up for long anyway.
It only stays up for about half a day, then I take it down.
Anyone can sell nowadays.
You see little kids, 12-year-olds and everything, you know,
setting up accounts and that.
Because it’s easy, isn’t it? Anyone can do it.
You can sit at home, make an account and make money.
Who doesn’t want to do that?
Social media has clearly made it easier for young people
to both become drug dealers and take drugs.
And since drugs have radically shifted into the digital sphere,
there has been a slew of deaths among young people.
I’d heard about the death of a 13-year-old girl in Warrington
named Ebony,
who had died of an Ecstasy overdose at the end of 2018.
Feeling let down by the police,
her mother, Kerry, has since made it her mission to find
who was responsible for selling drugs to her child.
On the first of December,
something just made me get up out of bed and just go and check on her.
Walked to her bedroom, opened the door,
and she was having a seizure.
So the ambulance people got in,
and I just see Ebony on the stretcher.
And they’re resuscitating her.
I’m sorry.
Trying to bring her back to life, trying to get her heart working.
I just collapsed.
Collapsed in the hospital.
And what do you suspect happened?
Well, it’s been put in her drink, we know that.
It’s come back that actually the bottles were laced with MDMA.
I have heard that there’s quite a lot of teenagers,
like young, say 13, 14 onwards, that are taking this stuff.
But it is around Liverpool areas
where there has been quite a few deaths.
People are coming forward, saying to me that there are people
that are using Instagram and Snapchat to sell drugs.
And maybe Ebony got her drugs from there.
We put a ‘Rest in Peace Ebony’ page up.
That’s a page on Instagram which is run by three of her friends,
Ebony’s close friends.
Basically says, “Anybody please give any information
and it will remain anonymous.”
And we have had plenty of information.
Quite a few of the text messages say,
“This drug has come from a gang called ‘Happy Dayz’.”
The police need to look at that.
I've had no response off the police.
The police haven’t visited me once.
Myself and the neighbors, we’ve been doing our own investigations.
This is a conversation that I had with one of the police officers.
It looks like this job has fallen through the net
in that it’s fallen into a pool of jobs
currently not being handled by anybody.
I’m sorry, that’s ****.
- That is ****. - Yeah.
These people need investigating.
But I haven’t got the means and the resources to be doing that.
That's the police's job.
Kerry has received a series of anonymous tip-offs
that Ebony may have been sold drugs
by a Snapchat gang known as ‘Happy Dayz’,
who apparently sell outside a toddler softplay center of that name.
I went to help Kerry flyer there.
I’ve got a flyer here.
Basically, it’s asking for anybody
with any information about the deaths.
I’ve been putting all these posters up around this area.
Until I get the answers
and I find out who’s responsible for my daughter’s death,
I won’t stop. I won’t stop.
And do you know what? I can see why people take the law
into their own hands as well, definitely.
So this here’s now Happy Days, the building we’re approaching.
Happy Days is a softplay area where kids go.
But overnight, when the building’s shut down,
it’s been known that a few gangs will hang around here
and sell the drugs to the kids.
They called themselves the ‘Happy Dayz Crew’.
And how did you find that out?
It was kids on the internet telling me.
They think that Ebony’s drug came from here.
‘Happy Dayz’ does have a part of Instagram and selling drugs,
I know there’s a connection.
Do you think social media sites need to be held accountable?
I don’t think there’s a lot we can do about that, to be honest.
Unless somebody stands up and reports them for doing it.
It needs parents just to be a little bit more aware
and talk to their kids about drugs.
I know we all do, as parents.
I did, to my kids.
Kids needs to be told to stay away from that stuff.
You don’t know what you’re getting,
and you are playing Russian roulette with your life.
But if there is anything going on with social media,
just stay away from it.
What is your end goal for all this?
I just want to find out who is responsible for Ebony’s death.
I want them held accountable.
I’m going to meet a couple of teenage drug dealers.
They’re the kind of drug dealers that Ebony and her friends
might have been buying drugs off.
They sell on Instagram and Snapchat, and I want to find out how they think
social media has changed the game of drug dealing.
So what are you guys selling tonight?
Some flake.
Some Cali.
Some weed.
Different types of weed.
And what’s in there?
That’s sleigh, that.
Cocaine, yeah?
And you’ve been doing that for how long?
Five years.
And how old are the people usually? What’s the age range of people?
Usually adults for cocaine.
It’s mostly adults for cocaine.
That’s true, because it’s expensive.
Is it because MDMA is cheap that kids like that?
Yeah, you can get MD for dirt cheap.
Yeah, dirt cheap.
A tenner or something.
- Really, a tenner for that? - For a gram, it’s a gram.
For a gram? Wow, that’s cheap.
Who is that ringing?
It doesn’t matter.
Is that your dealer phone?
Yeah, yeah.
How do you guys usually sell your drugs?
Through Snapchat and **** like that.
Snapchat and Instagram.
This is the different sorts of... weed, isn’t it?
It’s just menus, isn’t it?
That’s the money.
Different buds and that.
We get a lot of money.
We put it out on Snapchat, there’s a lot more people coming to us.
You get a lot more money.
You help people out by doing them favours, things and stuff,
so you overweigh the bags and stuff.
They shout you out and then you get more customers.
Like, their mates will come round to you,
so they’re earning you money, do you know what I mean?
And do you think that kids are subjected to drugs more now?
I’ve seen kids doing them about 12 years old and that.
Things like that, like really young ages.
No matter what age you are, it doesn’t matter.
It’s their choice to go out on Snapchat.
It’s more your sort of friends group.
Your friends, they do it, we don’t, you know what I mean?
You’re the one that texts for it,
we don’t text you asking, “Do you want it?”
So they’re the ones coming to us.
But we’re not like, persuading them,
we don’t try and do them deals or something.
If they text us from what he puts in his story, or something,
then they’ll get served, obviously.
And then they shout you out and put you in their story.
And then their friends come to you, do you know what I mean?
So they’re getting you customers and that.
Right, so that’s the way that they find it?
- Yeah. - Yeah, yeah.
So there’s more people telling each other.
It’s word getting about, isn’t it?
It’s their choice to get the drugs, at the end of the day.
People have got to make the money some way.
If you’ve got to sell drugs, you’ve got to do it.
Have you guys heard of young people around this area
dying from taking drugs?
Some people take dodgy ecstasy tablets and that.
Like teenagers.
It’s teenagers, 16, 15, isn’t it?
And have you heard of the stories of young people dying
from buying off Snapchat and Instagram?
They don’t know where it comes from.
Don’t know.
Turn it off.
And again.
Alright. Go on, I’ll ring you.
What were they asking for?
Doesn’t matter.
It’s mum.
These are just two of many kids
who have gotten into drug dealing in this area.
And despite knowing the potential fatal consequences,
they seem quite unconcerned about selling to minors.
This explosion of drug dealing onto social media, and its repercussions,
are now being debated in the halls of government.
Drug NGO Volteface recently published a study
that documents the tech-savvy ways the industry has been revolutionized.
Our polling data identified that it’s Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram
where drugs are most commonly seen.
Social media is the ideal platform for drug dealers.
So they can adopt similar marketing techniques
that legitimate businesses would use, do bundles, they can do giveaways.
We found that one in four young people see drug adverts
on social media, which I thought was astonishingly high.
We found that most of what they see is cannabis.
But actually cocaine, MDMA,
Xanax, nitrous oxide were also quite high up.
I think we should note that NHS data has shown that
class A drug use amongst 11-to-15-year-olds is increasing.
Do the police force have resources to go through social media
and look for drug dealers?
From what I can see, no they don’t.
They don’t even have the resources
to be dealing with more traditional methods of dealing,
where it would happen on the street.
When I went through your report, there was a text of different emojis
that you thought that drug dealers would use when they’re online.
Do you think the police force don’t know about that kind of thing?
Yeah, and something that we recommend in our report
is that there should be a regulatory obligation for social media platforms
to monitor their sites, be aware of what would be examples
of the sort of emojis and language that dealers are using.
And we make the case that they should be passing that information
on to the police.
Would you say that social media has made it easier
for people to become drug dealers?
I think it absolutely has.
But actually what social media is doing
is it’s advertising to mainly young people,
how easy it is to become a drug dealer.
We're really worried by that.
Like every other business,
drug dealing has evolved in conjunction with technology,
using modern tools of marketing and finding a new audience.
When that audience involves minors, we’re in a terrifying new world
where kids are taking substances that their bodies can’t handle.
Which is made worse by the fact that they don’t have any education
on drugs, and how much is too much.
Should social media giants be forced to shut down every account
that’s selling drugs?
Or should the authorities work closer with these companies
to better regulate this digital Wild West?
What’s certain is that spreading harm reduction education,
especially at a young age,
would help prevent these endless deaths of young people.