Oprah’s Dr. Laura Berman sues Snapchat over son’s fentanyl death

Appearing on TV, Laura Berman is a therapist specializing in sexuality and relationships. 

At home in Manhattan Beach, Calif., she had been the mother to three boys.

When one, 16-year-old Sammy, died from fentanyl poisoning, via a line of cocaine laced with the synthetic opiate, that he bought from a dealer on Snapchat, she was one more mom who found herself dealing with heartbreak.

Now she is on a mission to make sure that other parents don’t suffer the same fate.

She is doing that by pushing for the passage of Sammy’s Law — which will allow parents to be notified about “dangerous content is on their devices” — and is one of 64 other parents suing Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, for product liability following their children’s drug-related deaths.

She has also met Snap’s CEO, Evan Spiegel, to press for change.

“Our youngest son found Sammy in his room,” Berman told The Post of the 2021 incident. “It was Super Bowl Sunday. The drug dealer connected with Sammy through Snapchat.”

According to Berman’s husband Sam Chapman, “The drug got delivered to our home as if it was a pizza. And Sammy died from fentanyl poisoning. He passed out and choked on his own vomit. The [quantity of fentanyl] was enough for an addict and too much for him.”

Berman and Chapman told The Post that they hold Snapchat partly responsible for the death of their son. The couple is one of multiple bereaved families individually suing parent company Snap, Inc.

Sammy’s parents maintain that the drug dealer, who they say went by the handle Mr.Don248, with the promise of “I deliver” under his name, befriended the teenager via a Snapchat feature known as Quick Add. (The account no longer exists.)

Quick Add refers people on Snapchat to other people on the app as possible friends. Similar features also expand contact-lists on other social-media apps — but those lack the geo-locator component that allows Snapchatters to find one another.

At best, it tells kids where their friends happen to be hanging out or where the cool parties might be.

“Combine the Quick Add with geo-location,” said Chapman, “and it allows drug dealers to friend you and find you. Sammy was sent a colorful menu of drugs and the drug that poisoned Sammy was delivered to our house.”

According to Snap, Sammy would have accepted the dealer as a friend and okayed the dealer knowing his geolocation.

Snap told The Post QuickAdd is not for introducing strangers, but people with whom the account-holder has mutual friends or has in their phone contacts; users have to accept requests to be added.

Berman is unmoved. “Letting [teenagers] on Snapchat is the equivalent of dropping them off in the worst part of the city,” she said. “I’m talking about a neighborhood full of drug dealers, pimps and rapists when [the teenagers] are too young to weigh consequences of their actions.”

Insult was added to injury for Chapman and Berman when police found the dealer who sold drugs to their son, but the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office opted not to prosecute. “They said that the drugs were acquired prior to Sammy’s death,” Chapman told The Post. “So, anything could have happened in the meantime.”

The LA DA’s office told The Post, “We were unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the drugs that caused the death of Samuel were sold by this particular dealer. None of this negates the tremendous loss that is felt by this family. They have our deepest sympathies.”

In a couple of weeks, Sammy’s face will be on a billboard in Los Angeles. Put up by a drug-education non-profit called Rachel’s Angels, it warns, “Fentanyl steals teens.”

Sammy’s parents have company in feeling dismayed over what they view as Snapchat’s role in their child’s drug-related death. 

Attorney Laura Marquez-Garrett represents 65 families in separate fentanyl-related product-liability lawsuits against Snapchat. 

One litigant is Perla Mendoza of Seal Beach, Calif. Her son Elijah was 20 when he contacted a friend, via Snapchat, and asked if he had a lead on obtaining Xann.

“That’s shorthand for Xanax,” Mendoza told The Post, adding that, later in the day, he fatally overdosed from fentanyl.

“The friend referred him to two other people on Snapchat. He made contact with one of those people by friending him.

“It appears that the initial contact was made on Snapchat. It is inconspicuous. There was never a mention of fentanyl.”

Later, she added, “the narcotics investigator told me that Elijah should not have been on the dark web. But Snapchat is hardly the dark web.”

Marquez and her clients maintain that they pressed Snapchat to make adjustments that could prevent this from happening to other kids and in court filings accuse it of being “the go-to means to distribute drugs to children, teens, and young adults through social media.”

They claim Snap is involved in a far greater number of teen fentanyl deaths than other social media apps and that its default feature of deleting posts after 24 hours makes it obvious it would become a “haven for drug trafficking.”

Marquez told The Post the parents were trying to make change happen.

“Snap made promises that they did not follow through on,” she told The Post. “This lawsuit was a last resort. These companies don’t understand anything other than money.”

Snap will try to have the case dismissed on October 18 at the Superior Court in Los Angeles.

According to Snap, changes have been made, including in-app warnings and stronger friending protections that are designed to prevent contact with unsavory individuals.

Expressing empathy for “families who have suffered unimaginable losses,” a Snap spokesperson told The Post, “We use cutting-edge technology to help us proactively find and eradicate drug content and accounts. We block search results for drug-related terms.”

The company also said it keeps data from accounts it suspends, and has “expanded our support for law enforcement investigations, including by preserving and legally disclosing data to assist in their efforts.”

Besides including themselves in the suit, Berman and Chapman have evolved into what they call “accidental activists.”

They are pushing for the enactment of Sammy’s Law, which would give parents the ability to track their kids’ online activities and be notified when certain words are used in communication on the app, via third party software.

They maintain that this is currently not doable on Snapchat, which, according to a Pew Research Center survey, was used by 60% of teens aged 13 to 17 in 2022. Their quest is being captured in a documentary.

Snap maintains that there “is no independent evidence that allowing a parent to surveil their teens’ communications necessarily leads to a lower risk of safety or well-being issues.”

Snapchat offers a tool called Family Center, which allows parents to see who their kids are communicating with. But, unlike the third-party software that Sammy’s law is rallying for, it does not notify them about what is actually being posted or communicated. 

Opponents of such third-party software cite infringements on privacy. “Screw their privacy,” said Berman. “I just want to know about a few key words.” Pointing out that the words can seem innocuous to parents, she added, “’Snowflake’ would be code for cocaine. ‘Plug’ refers to the dealer.”

Berman and Chapman have met with Snap CEO Evan Spiegel to discuss their concerns. “He said the right things,” said Berman.

“He said he was sorry for us. We told him the trouble we had contacting him and that police said that Snapchat does not help. [After the conversation] he put more people on responding to police requests.

“I asked why he would not allow [a third-party software] on his system. He talked word-salad about privacy and data. They created a PSA about the dangers of fentanyl, if a kid puts in fentanyl [on a Snapchat post]. But he did not give us enough satisfaction.”

A Snap spokesperson told The Post, in reference to Spiegel, “He has been deeply committed to doing our part to aggressively tackle this epidemic. We think of the Chapman family and other families who have experienced profound loss and we will not waver in our commitment to helping raise awareness and combat this crisis.”

Sam Chapman wonders about Spiegel’s personal decisions. “Evan Spiegel’s kids are not old enough to be on Snapchat,” Chapman said. “It will be interesting to see if he will allow them on there when they are teenagers.”