Drug dealers in Texas who sell narcotics through social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram can now see their prison sentences potentially doubled thanks to a new state senate bill that critics believe can result in potentially harmful government overreach. 

Texas Senate Bill 1833, which went into effect this month, increases the punishment for a drug offense to the next highest category if it is found that a social media platform was used to facilitate the deal. In practice, the law raises charges by one degree — for instance, a second-degree charge now becomes a first-degree charge — if social media plays a role in the crime.

“If somebody sells or purchases, any kind of drug through social media — it doesn’t have to be a post — it can be a DM, or direct message — and that’s found out a part of the investigation, the potential prison time can be doubled,” a criminal defense attorney, Justin Sparks, said in an Instagram post. 

For those already convicted of first-degree felonies, the bill adds five years to the existing prison sentence and doubles the maximum fine.

Critics fear the scope of the law is too broad and risks being arbitrarily enforced against those whose use of social media could be “incidentally or algorithmically linked to a crime.” 

“The bill risks chilling lawful digital expression if defendants begin to fear that online activity—even if innocuous or incidental—could be interpreted as “facilitating” a crime,” a nonpartisan public policy organization, Texas Policy Research, wrote in its analysis of the bill. 

The bill was brought forth after 14 Dallas-area teenagers overdosed, four of them fatally, in 2023 from taking fentanyl-laced pills they purchased on social media from a local drug ring with ties to a Mexican drug cartel.

“Following the tragedy, the school district interviewed overdose victims, and nearly all had obtained these counterfeit pills through social media,” Representative Rafael Anchía, a Democrat of Dallas, said.

One of the dealers, Rafael Soliz Jr., used Instagram to sell fentanyl-laced painkillers to a 13-year-old middle schooler, even offering her instructions on how to snort the drug. Upon learning of her age, Soliz instructed her to delete her chat and switch their Instagram to “Vanish Mode.” The girl was found dead in her bedroom in Carrollton, having overdosed on fentanyl and cough medicine. In 2024, Soliz, who admitted to personally selling 1,500 fentanyl pills to minors and adults, was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison.

The Drug Enforcement Administration warns that drug dealers are increasingly turning to social media platforms to sell fentanyl pills that have been fabricated to resemble popular prescription drugs like Xanax and Adderall. 

In 2023, the DEA seized nearly 44 million fentanyl pills and arrested more than 3,000 people as part of a multi-year investigation into nationwide drug distribution rings with ties to the Jalisco and Sinaloa cartels. 

“The Cartels use social media and encrypted platforms to run their operations and reach out to victims, and when their product kills Americans, they simply move on to try to victimize the millions of other Americans who are social media users,” a former DEA administrator, Anne Milgram, said.

The new Texas law likely does not draw in encrypted messaging services like Signal and Telegram, nor would it involve SMS or Apple text messages: These platforms don’t appear to meet the definition of a social media platform as laid out in Texas law.  

In 2023, Governor Greg Abbott signed a law that classifies fentanyl overdoses as “poisonings,” which could result in fentanyl suppliers being hit with murder charges. In April, Eric Robles became the first person in Texas charged with murder in connection with a fentanyl overdose.