Teens have easier access to drugs as illegal trade booms on social media

Last winter, Megan Macintosh found her 18-year-old son Chase unconscious after she says he experimented with pills. He died just over a month later, likely from a pill laced with fentanyl from an unknown source. 

Macintosh turned to his social media for answers. Looking through her son's Snapchat, she said she saw bags of pills and mushrooms. "I felt really helpless like there's really nothing I can do when I saw how prevalent it was, how many people were in his feed," she said. 

The drug trade is booming on social media, according to Kathleen Miles, who works for the Center on Illicit Networks and Transnational Organized Crime. "I think social media can be great, but it also has a really dark side of it," Miles said.