The Facebook drug dealers: How cannabis and cocaine is openly being peddled to children on social media
The Facebook drug dealers: How
cannabis and cocaine is openly being peddled to children on social media
·
Scores of criminals are freely
touting for business on Facebook and other sites
·
Many are offering cannabis for
sale while one dealer even offered to sell cocaine
·
Social media sites were accused
of failing to shut down ‘blatant’ law-breaking
·
Calls for tougher sanctions over
failure tech giants' failure to stop criminality
·
·
Drug dealers are openly using Facebook to
target children, a Daily Mail investigation reveals.
Scores of criminals are freely touting for business on the site
and other social media giants including Instagram
and Twitter.
Many are
offering cannabis for sale. One dealer, when contacted, offered to sell
cocaine. A reporter posing as a teenage boy found dealers on Facebook willing
to supply him with drugs even when they knew he was still at school.
On
Instagram, the picture sharing site owned by Facebook, an account with more
than 22,000 followers appeared to be dedicated to verifying genuine cannabis
dealers in the UK
Last
night, the social media sites were accused of failing to shut down ‘blatant’
law-breaking and of ‘aiding and abetting’ the sale of drugs. They have already
come under fire for their alleged failure to restrict terrorist material or
launch crackdowns on the activities of child abusers.
MPs and
campaigners yesterday called for internet giants to face tougher sanctions over
the continued failure to root out criminal activity.
A
Government spokesman said: ‘We want the UK to be the safest place in the
world to be online. Anything that is illegal offline should be illegal online.
We encourage people to report [anything] concerning to the police as well as
... report such images to the app providers themselves.’
The Mail’s investigation followed
a report earlier this month that warned that children as young as 13 were using
social media to buy drugs online.
The
report, from the charity Young Addaction, said dealers were using hashtags and
emojis to advertise their wares, with a big rise in the trend in the last 18
months.
Now the
Mail has found evidence of the alarming scale of drugs now being advertised on
sites that are hugely popular with youngsters. Our reporter was able to find
drugs offered for sale on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter within five minutes.
The sites were found to host
thousands of posts and accounts linked to dealers and abusers. Pushers use
emoji codes and hashtags – including #weed4sale – to attract buyers.
They use
photography via Instagram to flaunt their stock and direct customers to their
account on encrypted messenger app Wickr. Illegal deals are then arranged on
the free app without fear of police accessing the messages.
Cannabis
dealers provided a menu of both home-grown and imported marijuana in stock.
Posing as a schoolboy, our reporter contacted two Facebook pages pedalling
drugs online, and both immediately agreed to sell.
One page,
which the Mail has chosen not to name, featured pictures of bags of drugs.
Minutes after a sending a message, a man called back using the alias of a
Tottenham footballer offering two grams of ‘banging Charlie’ [slang for
cocaine] for £120 or some ‘great weed’.
He was
unconcerned at being told the would-be buyer was still at school.
Another
Facebook page provided a price list featuring an array of cannabis products
costing from £100 to £350. One of its sister sites was shut down last week
after the Mail got in contact. But yesterday afternoon there were at least four
other sites advertising drugs with the same contact details.
·
reporter was able to find dealers offering to sell ecstasy and
cannabis on Facebook within minutes.
Cannabis appeared to be advertised on Facebook last month by a
user in Bristol.
The page was deleted after the Mail alerted Facebook, but
several other near-identical pages offering the drug with the same contact
details were still live last night.
Posing as a schoolboy, the Mail contacted two other Facebook
pages peddling drugs online, and both immediately agreed to sell.
One was unconcerned when told the would-be buyer is still at
school, and told him to meet him in East London close to Canary Wharf to
complete the deal.
Another site provided a price list of cannabis products costing
from £100 to £350 when contacted. The dealer told the reporter to send a Post
Office MoneyGram and he would deliver to his address.
The undercover reporter emailed back: ‘Will it be well disguised
because I don’t want my mum to notice it if it arrives while I’m at school?’
The dealer replied, ‘Yeah mate it’s well packaged and sealed.’
INSTAGRAM
Scores of Instagram account holders were found to be posting
photos of cannabis for sale.
Some dealers even posted menus of what was available to buy if
customers got in touch using their Wickr username – an encrypted messenger app.
Using Wickr, a reporter found dealers across the UK willing to
sell and post drugs.
One dealer even offered to include a free gram as it was the
first order.
TWITTER
It took less than two minutes for us to find a US dealer willing
to ship 150 ecstasy (MDMA) pills to London.
The dealer had posted scores of photos of pills and cannabis –
urging buyers to get in touch.
Through Wickr he offered to send our reporter 150 Class A MDMA
pills for £1,630 using a ‘scout’ in the UK.
Drugs are
also offered on Instagram. One dealer posted a photograph of two large bags of
cannabis on Instagram, urging potential customers: ‘Don’t miss out.’
Other
boasts included ‘we provide the most official delivery service’ and ‘get it
delivered the next day’.
Punters
are even offered a menu of different types of powerful cannabis with names
including ‘alien glue’. A pusher from the US advertising on Twitter offered 150
ecstasy tablets – a Class A drug – for £1,630 via the Wickr messaging service.
It is
illegal to possess Class B cannabis in the UK and those caught dealing it face
up to 14 years in prison. But youth drug worker Nick Hickmott, of charity Young
Addaction, said drug dealing online was increasing and internet firms were
‘turning a blind eye’. He said Instagram was the ‘preferred choice’ among
cannabis dealers, adding: ‘It is just so blatant.
‘It is
unbelievable that it is allowed to operate like that. They are the only ones
that have the power to police it. If these big multimedia companies wanted to
do something about it they could.’
Mr
Hickmott claimed that the picture sharing apps Instagram and Snapchat tended to
be the platforms most used for dealing. The Mail’s investigation now proves
reports that dealers were sharing images of the drugs before providing
alternative contact details.
David
Green, of the Citivas think-tank, said social media firms could find themselves
criminally responsible if they did not do enough to stop blatant criminality.
He said:
‘It is another example of an organisation that claims to be nothing more than a
platform that in this case is aiding and abetting the sale of illegal substances.’
Labour MP
Helen Goodman, a former shadow culture minister, last night said: ‘This is yet
another example of social media firms denying the power and influence they have
and failing to act as responsible citizens. It will reach the point with these
social media companies where there are so many problems that the Government
must ... start looking at both legal changes and proper enforcement.’
Home
Office minister Victoria Atkins said last night: ‘We want the UK to be the
safest place in the world to be online. Anything that is illegal offline should
be illegal online. We encourage people to report concerning material to the
police as well as using the in app tools to report such images to the app
providers themselves.’
Last
night, a Facebook spokesman said: ‘We encourage our community to report any
activity like this using our reporting tools so we can quickly remove it.
‘We
recently announced we’ll be doubling our security team to 20,000 people over
the next year to improve how we detect and remove content that shouldn’t be on
Facebook.’ Instagram said it encouraged users to report illegal activity.
Twitter said all users must agree not to use the site for unlawful purposes. A
spokesman said account holders were not allowed to use it for ‘any unlawful
purposes’.
He added:
‘By using Twitter, you agree to comply with all applicable laws governing your
online conduct and content.’
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