Kids these days! It’s so hard to understand what they are talking about. They only communicate in hashtags and incomprehensible facial expressions. What is a Skibidi toilet, anyway? Yes, our generation had Internet slang, but at least “lol” is in the dictionary. Perhaps the emoji is the most ambiguous form of online communication, and perhaps that is by design. Of course, sometimes the meaning of an emoji makes all the difference in a criminal case. Defendants have achieved not guilty verdicts by showing that a text message they sent can plausibly mean something other than what the prosecution says it means.  

By this logic, emojis are a land of opportunity. Consider that you interpret your mother-in-law’s smiley emoji as passive-aggressive, while she insists that it is just a smile and that when she responds to your photos by adding a pink heart to the upper corner, it could just as easily mean “love” as “bless your heart.” The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has published a list of emojis that it frequently sees in text message exchanges entered as evidence in drug crime cases that ended with guilty pleas and convictions. If your text messages are causing law enforcement to suspect you of drug crimes, contact a Tulsa drug charge lawyer.

Introducing the DEA’s Drug Crime Emoji Decoder

Have you ever lost sleep over why your crush texted you a blue heart today when he texted you a red heart yesterday? Does it mean that your love has run cold? The DEA thinks that it has figured it out. Sometimes those different colors of hearts can refer to different illegal drugs.  Maybe your crush is in the mood for meth today, while yesterday he was all about the MDMA. These are the emojis that the DEA sees most often in reference to drugs prevalent in the illegal drug supply:

•       Cannabis – palm tree, Christmas tree, four-leaf clover, puff of air, flame, smiley blowing smoke from its mouth
•       Cocaine – snowflake, snowman, snow cloud, 8-ball, diamond
•       Methamphetamine – blue heart, crystal ball, test tube, diamond
•       Heroin – dragon, brown heart
•       Promethazine cough syrup (“lean”) – bunch of grapes, purple heart, baby bottle
•       MDMA (“molly” or “ecstasy”) – red heart, orange X, lightning bolt, smiley blowing smoke from its nostrils, wrapped candy

Meanwhile, the DEA has seen the pill capsule emoji, the one that reminds us old folks of the Dr. Mario Nintendo game, in reference to various prescription pills, such as oxycodone, Adderall, and Xanax. Perhaps the most inspired emoji that the DEA has seen in drug trafficking-related text is the chocolate chip cookie emoji, which stands for a “big batch” of drugs. It is easy to see how these emojis can have more than one interpretation. For example, a palm tree and a cookie might mean that you have a big batch of cannabis, or it could mean that you have cookies baked with THC oil or that you have the munchies after smoking weed.

Contact Tracy Tiernan About Criminal Defense Cases

A criminal defense lawyer can help you if you are facing criminal charges for drug crimes, based on evidence from your text messages. Contact Tracy Tiernan in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to discuss your case.