In 2016, California voters were asked to approve Proposition 64 to legalize recreational marijuana. Proponents of the initiative sold it to voters with the promise that the industry would not target or advertise to children. Five years later, with billboards advertising cannabis infused gummies and hard candies, with shops named “Cookies” touting flavors like lemonade, and with some advertisements mimicking the logo of shows featured on Disney+, it is easy to see that the industry has broken their promise and that it is time to reform the law.
Cannabis advocates and their high-price public relations firms claim that the legal market needs time to become established in order to displace the illegal market. I don’t disagree. But we cannot place cannabis advertisements above the collective interest of protecting our children. This is not unlike the fight to prevent tobacco companies from advertising to young people several decades ago. It’s simple. Advertising to children works. We have the opportunity right now to avoid making the same mistakes of the past that got entire generations hooked on habit-forming substances.
A recent study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs found a significant increase in the use of marijuana for children in California since legalization. According to the study out of Rutgers University, using data from the California Healthy Kids Survey, researchers observed significant increases in marijuana use among nearly all…
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In 2016, California voters were asked to approve Proposition 64 to legalize recreational marijuana. Proponents of the initiative sold it to voters with the promise that the industry would not target or advertise to children. Five years later, with billboards advertising cannabis infused gummies and hard candies, with shops named “Cookies” touting flavors like lemonade, and with some advertisements mimicking the logo of shows featured on Disney+, it is easy to see that the industry has broken their promise and that it is time to reform the law.
Cannabis advocates and their high-price public relations firms claim that the legal market needs time to become established in order to displace the illegal market. I don’t disagree. But we cannot place cannabis advertisements above the collective interest of protecting our children. This is not unlike the fight to prevent tobacco companies from advertising to young people several decades ago. It’s simple. Advertising to children works. We have the opportunity right now to avoid making the same mistakes of the past that got entire generations hooked on habit-forming substances.
A recent study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs found a significant increase in the use of marijuana for children in California since legalization. According to the study out of Rutgers University, using data from the California Healthy Kids Survey, researchers observed significant increases in marijuana use among nearly all…