Teens Use These Emojis To Purchase Illegal Drugs, Here Is Everything You Need To Know To Decode Their Messages

Teens today are purchasing drugs via popular social media platforms and text messaging, so as a parent how do you monitor their online interactions?

Experts reveal they are able to decode the popularized secret terms and emojis used in drug deals that can lead to fatal deaths.

Teens Use These Emojis To Purchase Illegal Drugs, Here Is Everything You Need To Know To Decode Their Messages

Just last year, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration shared a parental guide to deciphering the “Emoji Drug Code,” a graphic bearing popular symbols repurposed for drug deals.

For example, the pill emoji symbolizes drugs like Percocet, Adderall, or Oxycodone, while heroin is depicted with a snake or a brown heart and cocaine is a snowflake. The emblem for marijuana is a palm or pine tree.

Dealers indicate big batches of drugs with a cookie symbol while high-potency substances are represented with a bomb or rocket emojis.

“Fake prescription pills, commonly laced with deadly fentanyl and methamphetamine, are often sold on social media and e-commerce platforms,” the federal agency warns.

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Eric Feinberg, the vice president of content moderation at the non-profit Coalition for a Safer Web, revealed more common verbiage used in drug deals.

“The word ‘plug’ means ‘hook me up'” with drugs,” Feinberg told the outlet. While the misspelled words like “pilz” (pills), “xanaz” (Xanax), “cush” (marijuana) lead to interactions without triggering social media safeguards, he said.

CEO of the Institute for Advertising Ethics, Andrew Sussman, said advertisers risk ads running alongside drug-related content. “There’s no perfect filter.”

“We explicitly prohibit any activity related to illicit drug sales on Snapchat, and we are determined to bring all our resources to bear to make our platform a hostile environment for drug dealers,” a spokesperson from Snapchat told TODAY.

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“We use cutting edge technologies to proactively detect this type of content so we can shut down dealers’ accounts and block them from trying to create new ones. We also work with drug enforcement agencies, and with third-party intelligence experts that scan other platforms for illicit drug content that references Snapchat, so we can take swift action to find and ban those dealers’ accounts,” the statement concluded.

While a spokesperson for Instagram spokesperson said:

“We prohibit the sale of illicit drugs on Instagram and have developed technology to find and remove this content proactively. In 2022, we actioned on 1.8 million pieces of drug content, of which 96% was proactively detected before anyone reported it to us. We have disabled the accounts in question and will continue making improvements to keep people safe on Instagram.”