Protecting the Next Generation of North Carolinians

Job one for us all is protecting our kids – at home, at school, online, or wherever they are. Attorney General Josh Stein is working to keep our children safe through a variety of measures, including protecting them from sexual assault, gun violence, addiction, social media dangers, and harmful and unlawful marketing and sales tactics.

Substance Misuse

Kids’ brains are still developing well into their twenties. And if young people get addicted to any substance, then their brains develop the neural pathways that can lead to more addiction to other substances, dramatically diminishing their future prospects.

Attorney General Stein has been leading the fight against addiction among young people by:

Opioids: Securing more than $50 billion nationally, $1.4 billion of which will go to North Carolina to combat the opioid crisis. These funds will go to help provide treatment and recovery services to North Carolinians struggling with substance use disorder.
- Fatal opioid overdoses nearly doubled among teens aged 14 to 18 between 2019 and 2020 and jumped another 20 percent in 2021.
- People between 18 and 25 now have the highest rate of illicit prescription pill use.

Fentanyl: Leading the state’s efforts to combat the fentanyl crisis and the rise in fentanyl trafficking and fentanyl-related overdose deaths.
- Seeking funding from the legislature to create a Fentanyl Control Unit within the Department of Justice to help local district attorneys handle large-scale fentanyl trafficking, wiretap, and overdose cases.
- Drafting and supporting legislation to address the growing threat of counterfeit pills containing fentanyl and other controlled substances.
- Drafting and supporting legislation to add nitazines, commonly considered the “next fentanyl” to the Controlled Substances Act.

E-cigarettes: Being the first attorney general to sue e-cigarette manufacturer JUUL in May 2019 for illegally marketing their products to young people in North Carolina and misrepresenting the nicotine potency in its products.
- In 2021, North Carolina became the first state in the nation to hold JUUL accountable, securing $40 million and changes to how the company markets and sells its product to protect young people – a model that several other states are now following.
- Suing JUUL founders James Monsees and Adam Bowen.
- Launching a statewide investigation into Puff Barr and other e-cigarette manufacturers up and down the e-cigarette supply chain.
- Urging the FDA Commissioner to further protect kids from flavored e-cigarettes.

Social Media and Mental Health

Too much of anything can be harmful, and that includes being online and using social media. On average, 8- to 12-year-olds use screens for more than five and a half hours a day, and 13- to 18-year-olds use screens for more than eight and a half hours a day. It’s clear that too many children and teens are struggling with their mental health, and many of those problems arise online.

That’s why Attorney General Stein is investigating social media companies and their marketing practices and looking to find solutions to help protect kids, which could include:

Making their platforms less addictive.
Mitigating harmful content that promotes suicide, eating disorders, and drug use.
Restricting young children from being on social media.
Verifying users’ ages.
Protecting marginalized children.
Meta: Attorney General Stein is part of an executive committee of states investigating Meta for providing and promoting Instagram to kids.
- In May 2021, Attorney General Stein and a bipartisan group of 44 attorneys general urged Facebook to abandon its plans to launch a version of Instagram for children under 13, citing serious concerns about the harm that social media poses for young people.
TikTok: Attorney General Stein launched an investigation into TikTok in 2022. The investigation is looking into the harms TikTok usage causes to young users and what TikTok knows about those harms. The investigation focuses, among other things, on the techniques TikTok uses to boost young user engagement, including the amount of time and frequency spent on the platform.
Parental Controls: Last year, Attorney General Stein urged Snapchat and TikTok to strengthen parental controls on their platforms. Those controls include allowing third party apps that empower parents to monitor content. Parental control apps empower parents by alerting them to potentially harmful messages, including content related to bullying, self-harm, and suicide, so parents can intervene and get help for their children.
Family Tech Agreement: Our office’s family tech agreement is a useful tool to help parents have important conversations with their children about online safety and responsible screen time. The tech agreement recommends starting a conversation about internet safety, setting parental controls, and setting limits to screen time.

Violence

For the first time in history, gun violence is the leading cause of death of children in the United States. In 2022 in North Carolina, 121 children died in North Carolina in gun-related incidents. We can and should do more to implement commonsense gun safety measures, including:

Universal background checks: Keep guns out of the hands of violent felons, people with serious mental illness, people on the no-fly list, and people with outstanding domestic violence protective orders.
Red flag laws (extreme risk protection orders): Authorize red flag laws so loved ones and friends can petition the court to remove guns from people who pose a risk to others or themselves.
Raise the age to 21: Ensure that North Carolinians under 21 – who are too young to buy a beer – are too young to purchase military-grade weapons.
Safe gun storage: Ensure safe storage of firearms so they are not a risk to children.
Promote school safety: Ensure every school is fully staffed with school nurses, social workers, counselors, and psychologists who can help kids and lower the risk of violence.

Attorney General Stein has led efforts to prevent children from abuse in North Carolina. He drafted and championed the SAFE Child Act, which protects children from abuse in person and online and modernizes North Carolina’s sexual assault laws by:

Expanding the duty to report child abuse.
Extending the statute of limitations to bring an action for child abuse.
Protecting children online from predators.
Strengthening existing sexual assault definitions.
Prohibiting the distribution of drugged beverages.
Providing additional rights to sexual assault victims.

Youth mental health resources are available here.