The following article originally appeared in the Colorado Springs Gazette.
Intelligent minds differ about the need for a war on drugs and laws against pot. Yet, few on either side thought state government would promote marijuana use with a slick, multimillion-dollar marketing campaign.
It began Monday, just a year after Colorado launched the world’s first wide-scale, store-front, take-out sales of a drug that’s illegal in most of the world. The initial $5.7 million to fund the ads will come from pot taxes that were supposed to be used for drug education. If these ads are educational, so was Joe Camel.
State officials said the first series of print, radio and TV ads target tourists. They announced plans to direct future ads at pregnant mothers, teens, parents and Hispanics. All media reports emphasize the ads are not intended to discourage marijuana use.
“This is not an aversion campaign,” said Larry Wolk, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, speaking at a press conference Monday.
You heard it right.
Tax money will buy a recreational-drug marketing campaign — aimed at children, women and minorities — that’s “not about aversion.”
The Associated Press, after a press conference announcing the campaign, reported the ads will tell people “just to use it safely.” Meanwhile, a growing body of scientific evidence suggests the drug cannot be used safely.
Wolk said the new campaign will be “bright and neighborly.” The AP story describes a radio announcer’s voice as “folksy,” and the Denver Post said the “folksy” announcer, advocating safe pot use, is “backed by what sounds like music from a square dance.” Ads, the Post explained, use bright colors and rhyming messages. It is, in the words of Post reporter John Ingold, “quite possibly the world’s first public service announcement on marijuana to feature hoedown music.”
Bright, colorful, folksy ads are precisely how Big Tobacco lured children to cigarettes before government banned such practices and forced the industry to fund aversion marketing.
The ban on cigarette TV ads, combined with tobacco aversion messaging, has worked. Smoking among adults has declined by half since 1974, based on data from the General Lifestyle Survey of the Officer for National Statistics.
Understanding how anti-vice and pro-vice campaigns work, state officials have chosen the latter. The following passage from a March article in Time magazine may provide an explanation:
“The Colorado Legislative Council, the nonpartisan research arm of the state legislature, has weighed in with its own estimate of how much legalizing retail marijuana will be worth: about $57 million in extra tax revenue. That’s less than half of what Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper’s office estimated last month, and nearly $10 million less than voters were told they should expect each fiscal year before legalizing the substance in 2012.”
Retail pot was supposed to create a windfall for government that has not materialized. And there’s nothing like a folksy, colorful, neighborly marketing blitz to get people into the stores. But don’t take our word for it. Marijuana store owner Ean Seeb, who sat on the committee that helped craft the ads, told the Post he was surprised government would pay for ads that don’t condemn marijuana use.
“It makes it more accessible,” Seeb said.
Coloradans voted for a law that would fund education, while negating the niche for black markets. They did not ask the state to normalize and promote marijuana with a marketing campaign so irresponsible the rest of the world will shake its head in disbelief.
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