SNS Drug Ads 'Unpunishable'... A Drug Republic Where Prevention Is Difficult From the Start

‘Sample 200,000 Ice Sticks’, ‘Please order from the exact sample quantity’

These are phrases that appear when searching for drug-related slang on social networking services (SNS). In fact, on the morning of the 12th, when entering the term ‘jakdae-gi’ (stick) on Twitter, 25 drug sale advertisement posts were found within just the past hour.

The posters openly promoted selling substances such as ‘Ice’, ‘Eoreum’ (Ice), ‘Snowflake’, ‘Crystal’ referring to methamphetamine, ‘Tteol’, ‘Jjeol’ referring to marijuana, ‘Herb’ referring to synthetic marijuana, and ‘Candy’ referring to ecstasy. Some sellers even posted photos or videos of substances resembling actual drugs.

Although drug transactions through SNS are openly taking place like this, it has been revealed that there are no proper preventive measures to curb them in advance. Because of this, the reality of South Korea is that it is falling from a ‘drug-free country’ to a ‘drug republic’.

An analysis of nationwide drug offenders arrested by the police from 2018 until August last year showed that 21.6% conducted drug transactions through the internet, including SNS.

On SNS, where anonymity is guaranteed, drug-related promotional posts are flooding in. For this reason, SNS drug transactions have recently been identified as the main cause of the increase in juvenile drug offenders. However, there is currently no way to regulate this.

Under the current Narcotics Control Act, to punish drug offenders, there must be evidence that actual drug transactions occurred or that drugs were used. However, these SNS platforms are operated by foreign companies and their servers are located overseas, so our government and judicial authorities have no authority to forcibly regulate or control them.

Under the current system, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety can promptly request the Korea Communications Standards Commission and others to delete or block illegal sales, mediation, or advertisement posts related to drugs or pharmaceuticals, and in cases of repeated violations, request investigations.

Even this depends entirely on the SNS operating companies’ decisions on how quickly to process or delete such content, making it difficult to exercise enforcement power. Moreover, recent trends show that new advertisement posts appear faster than deletions, making proper countermeasures difficult.

A police officer who was in charge of drug investigations in the Seoul area lamented, “It is practically impossible to start a drug investigation based solely on advertisements posted online,” adding, “There must be solid evidence or a crime scene, but in the case of SNS, tracking the poster is not easy, so it should be considered a blind spot.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.