X Launches Prevent Alliance to Combat Synthetic Drug Abuse

X is taking yet another step in combating the promotion of illegal substances in the app, by signing up to the Prevent Alliance, which aims to establish additional definitive guidelines and approaches to combat synthetic drug promotion inside social apps.

Synthetic drugs aim to replicate the effects of additional normally recognized illicit substances, like cocaine, marijuana and LSD. Arguably, the most notorious synthetic drug is fentanyl, although there are quite a few other hazardous variations of synthetic substances that have now established a marketplace amongst drug customers about the planet.

And they can result in really serious harm. Investigation shows that the repeated use of synthetics can result in “long term or irreversible harm to dopaminergic, adrenergic and serotonergic pathways in the brain”.

The additional potent mixes can also lead to additional really serious side effects and harms. As per the CDC, synthetic opioids are now the main driver of overdose deaths in the United States.

As such, it is significant for X, and certainly all social platforms to crack down on the promotion of synthetics, and this new initiative will ideally enable to establish additional detection and prevention processes amongst social apps.

Although, at the similar time, X owner Elon Musk himself requires ketamine, a synthetic substance, and his higher profile endorsement of this, and other synthetics, could run counter to the aims of this project.

Likely ideal to view the two in isolation (and Musk, it is worth noting, utilizes ketamine in a prescribed capacity), although with Elon’s celebrity, and his wish for interest, that is increasingly hard.