Introducing The DEA’s Drug Emoji Decoder
Drug culture is constantly changing, from the drugs that are readily available to their routes of administration and the demographics of their users. One thing that has remained consistent at least since the enactment of the federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970, though, is that the efforts of elders and law enforcement to understand the language, verbal and otherwise, with which young people refer to drugs, are woefully and sometimes hilariously unsuccessful. Young heads have always managed to stay a few steps ahead of the squares that attempted to scare them or punish them out of indulging in their favorite substances. Now that people use emojis to communicate about everything, it only makes sense that they sometimes use emojis to communicate about drugs. If you are under investigation for drug crimes because you texted emojis that police think are drug innuendos, contact a Pittsburgh drug crime lawyer.
The Beauty of Emojis Is Their Ambiguity
The ubiquity of text messages has been a boon to law enforcement when investigating crimes such as drug trafficking. When they have access to someone’s text messages, they might find names or nicknames of other people who buy or sell drugs, and this might lead to police investigating additional defendants. In many cases, the police get access to these text messages in connection to a defendant cooperating with an investigation as part of a plea deal.
Of course, words can have more than one meaning, and defendants charged on the basis of text messages can argue that their communications did not mean what prosecutors say they meant. If this is true of ostensibly straightforward text, such as “Are they here?” it is even more true of emojis, such as a balloon. The antecedent of “they” in “Are they here?” could refer to drugs, people who want to buy drugs, or almost anything else. A balloon emoji could refer to a party, getting high as a helium balloon, or any other interpretation your imagination can produce. If a skull can mean “lol,” a pill emoji can mean something other than drugs, the Dr. Mario Nintendo game, for instance.
In the News
The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has read many thousands of text messages while investigating drug crimes. It published a poster of some of the most common emojis it had seen in messages about illegal drugs. Some of them were straightforward, like a pill capsule emoji for pills like oxycodone, Xanax, or Adderall, or a mushroom emoji for psilocybin mushrooms. Others were more creative, like a crystal ball for methamphetamine or a dragon for heroin. Some were downright whimsical. Who knew that a chocolate chip cookie emoji could stand for a large batch of drugs? It is often possible to establish reasonable doubt about the meaning of the emojis in your text messages.
Contact Gary E. Gerson About Criminal Defense Cases
A criminal defense lawyer can help you if you are facing criminal charges for sending text messages with emojis that prosecutors claim refer to drug crimes. Contact the law offices of Gary E. Gerson in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania about your case.
Source:
dea.gov/sites/default/files/2021-12/Emoji%20Decoded.pdf
