Teens are using emoji and secret lingo to find illegal drugs. How parents can crack the code

Teens are buying drugs via popular social media platforms and text messaging, often right under their parents’ noses. Experts are decoding the secret terms and emojis used in deals that can be deadly. Becca Schmill, 18, of Needham, Mass. loved playing guitar and visiting presidential libraries and she was college bound, having been accepted into the University of Richmond in Virginia. But underneath that “funny, adventurous and determined” energy, Becca was using drugs, her parents said. In September 2020, Becca died from an accidental overdose, after using drugs laced with fentanyl. “We didn’t realize just how easy it was for her to have drugs delivered basically to our door,” Becca’s father, Stu Schmill, told NBC News anchor Kate Snow on Tuesday. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, fentanyl is “a powerful synthetic opioid that is similar to morphine but is 50 to 100 times more potent.”Becca used a shorthand to find drugs through social media, her parents said.Related: Here’s what’s really happening on social media According to a May research letter published in JAMA, the overdose death rate for adolescents almost doubled in 2020, then rose by an additional 20 percent in 2021. As reported by NBC News, many of those deaths…
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