Facebook Hides Search Results For Opioids Like Fentanyl To Curb Illegal Sales

Facebook has made a change to how its search function works that may be considered long overdue. As of Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg’s social behemoth has silenced search results for a number of popular opioid drugs that are typically sold online, TechCrunch reported. The change was noticed after the Center for Disease Control released new estimates for the number of opioid-linked deaths in 2017.

Specifically, searching for terms like “Fentanyl” and “OxyContin,” among several others, will no longer bring back results for Facebook pages, groups, and posts. There has been a market for illegal drug sales on Facebook and another social media sites, especially the ones listed above, which normally require a prescription to obtain.

One potential workaround that TechCrunch noted is that the searches still bring back accounts belonging to individual people. There were indeed users with “Fentanyl” in their account name that could still be found by searching for that term.

While few would argue this change is for the worst, it is worth pointing out the sale of these drugs on Facebook has been a known issue since at least 2017. At that point, users could simply find drug sales by searching “Oxycodone for sell” instead of “for sale.” It remains to be seen how easy it will be for dealers to sell their wares after the newest wave of search changes.

Aside from hiding search results, Facebook started displaying a page asking if the user needs help curbing their addiction if they searched for drug sales. If the user follows up on Facebook’s offer, they will be directed to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s support phone line.

The CDC’s data reflected a startling rise in drug overdose deaths in the U.S. Around 72,000 people died in the country in 2017 from overdoses, which is a record high in the U.S., per the New York Times. Around 30,000 deaths were attributed to synthetic opioids like Fentanyl. Usually prescribed for the treatment of things such as cancer pain, Fentanyl is as much as 100 times as powerful as Morphine and can prove fatal if mixed with other drugs, per the CDC.