Today's Law As Amended


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AB-1800 Negligence: controlled substances: social media companies.(2023-2024)



As Amends the Law Today


SECTION 1.
 The Legislature finds and declares both of the following:
(a) Fentanyl was the cause of 77.14 percent of drug deaths among teenagers in 2021.
(b) The unprecedented spike of children dying from overdosing on fentanyl has been documented to be the fault of social media. According to, for example, the New York Times article titled “Fentanyl Tainted Pills Bought on Social Media Cause Youth Drug Deaths to Soar:”
(1) Law enforcement authorities say an alarming portion of fentanyl overdoses unfolded from counterfeit pills tainted with fentanyl that teenagers and young adults bought over social media.
(2) Social media is almost exclusively the way teenagers and young adults get the pills.
(3) Overdoses are now the leading cause of preventable death among people ages 18 to 45, ahead of suicide, traffic accidents, and gun violence, according to federal data.
(4) There are drug sellers on every major social media platform. As long as a child is on one of those platforms, the child is going to have the potential to be exposed to drug sellers.
(c) Multibillion-dollar social media platforms are not, in the use of their own designs, features, products, or affordances, sufficiently financially motivated to exercise ordinary care to prevent these deaths and other injuries or deaths caused by ingesting controlled substances.

SEC. 2.

 Section 1714.12 is added to the Civil Code, immediately following Section 1714.11, to read:

1714.12.
 (a) Any person who suffers injury that is proximately caused by the illegal purchase of a controlled substance through a social media platform where it is shown that the injury was occasioned, in whole or in part, by the want of ordinary care or skill in the management of the platform pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section 1714 shall be entitled to recover any of the following from the platform:
(1) One hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) per violation in statutory damages.
(2) Five hundred thousand dollars ($500,000) per violation in statutory damages or double the actual damages, whichever is greater, if the violation resulted in death.
(3) One million dollars ($1,000,000) per violation in statutory damages or treble the amount in actual damages, whichever is greater, if the violation results in the death of a minor.
(4) Two million dollars ($2,000,000) per violation or treble the amount in actual damages, whichever is greater, if the violation resulted in a death of a minor who at the time of death was too young to be a user of the social media platform without their parent’s or guardian’s permission and the platform has not used the best available technology or reasonable measures to obtain permission directly from the parent or guardian.
(b) (1) A prevailing plaintiff who suffers injury as a result of a violation of subdivision (a) shall be entitled to reasonable attorney’s fees and costs.
(2) The rights and remedies provided by this section are cumulative and shall not be construed as restricting any other rights or remedies provided by law.
(c) The provisions of this section are severable. If any provision of this section or its application is held invalid, that invalidity shall not affect other provisions or applications that can be given effect without the invalid provision or application.
(d) For the purposes of this section, the following definitions apply:
(1) “Controlled substance” has the same meaning as that term is defined in Section 11007 of the Health and Safety Code.
(2) “Minor” means a person under 18 years of age.
(3) “Social media platform” means a social media platform, as defined in subdivision (e) of Section 22675 of the Business and Professions Code, that has annual gross revenues in excess of one billion dollars ($1,000,000,000) in the preceding calendar year, as of the January 1 of the calendar year when a person brought an action pursuant to this section.