Advocacy Alert: Cooper Davis Act Heads to Senate Floor

July 27, 2023

via Senator Marshall's website

On July 14, 2023, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bipartisan Cooper Davis Act (S.1080). The legislation -- championed by U.S. Senators Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-KS), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL), Todd Young (R-IN), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) – would require Big Tech companies to take a more proactive role against drug dealers preying on America’s youth on social media. The bill passed 16 to 5 and now heads to the Senate floor.

The bill is in honor of Cooper Davis, a 16-year-old Kansas teen who tragically lost his life to a counterfeit prescription drug laced with fentanyl in August 2021. It was later discovered that a drug dealer solicited Mr. Davis through a popular social media platform, Snapchat.

"Fentanyl continues to be the deadliest drug our nation has ever seen, a Kansan dies everyday from this poison. The Cooper Davis Act moving to the Senate Floor is a huge victory in our fight back against this epidemic. Our bipartisan legislation will save lives and give law enforcement the ability to fight back against these social media companies conducting drug sales on their platforms,"" Senator Marshall said.

Fentanyl is currently the most dangerous drug threat facing Americans, and fatal poisonings are the fastest growing among adolescents, teenagers, and young adults. The Cooper Davis Act would require social media companies and other communication service providers to take on a more proactive role in working with federal agencies to combat the illegal sale and distribution of drugs on their platforms by creating a standardized and comprehensive framework.

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