Concerned about adolescent marijuana use, Colorado is rebranding its anti-pot campaign to better target children and convince them that smoking can inhibit activity, success, and brain development. The $2 million dollar campaign, funded by marijuana tax revenue, is titled “What’s Next” and is scheduled to launch on August 22nd, fighting against the fact that 60% of Colorado adolescents have smoked weed by the 12th grade.
Age Requirement Was Intended to Restrict Adolescent Marijuana Use
Since voting to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012, Colorado has entered the American imaginary as a faded fairyland where people of all shapes and sizes share bongs and bubblers on mountaintops, often with the ghosts of Bob Marley or Ravi Shankar, observing how the colors of the sunset look exactly like that one John Denver song that Pretty Lights remixed.
But in fact, the state has been extremely cautious in rolling out its recreational program, especially because it still violates Federal law and could technically be shut down at any time. Among its many safety measures—controlling dosages in edibles, implementing marijuana open container laws, restricting use in public spaces—keeping weed away from minors has been a major priority, with mixed results. While strict age requirements have done a decent job at keeping anyone below 21 outside of recreational dispensaries, kids can still get the stuff.
Before recreational marijuana was ever legalized, Colorado’s adolescent marijuana use was already supplied almost exclusively by the state’s medical dispensaries. The resale market towards minors was firmly in place as Colorado’s more than 300 recreational dispensaries began opening up shop.
Colorado Will Try to Staunch Adolescent’s Demand, Not Supply
When it comes to the War on Drugs, there are ineffective tactics, and then there are really, stupidly, mind-bogglingly ineffective tactics. In terms of fighting adolescent drug use, Colorado appears to be shifting away from the latter.
The “What’s Next” campaign is an update of last year’s disastrously dumb campaign called “Don’t Be A Lab Rat.” The campaign tried to dissuade kids from smoking on the basis that some (disputed) studies link pot to brain damage, so why be part of an ongoing, dangerous experiment? In addition to informational web pages, videos, and materials, the campaign even featured several enormous, human-size rat cages to drive the point home—cages that were promptly vandalized, banned by several school districts, and eventually removed.
What Makes “What’s Next” Any Better?
Without evidence, no one can say whether the less Orwellian approach of the “What’s Next” campaign will work any better. But its honest approach of sharing what scientists and sociologists have observed—that the human brain develops until the age of 25, that statistically marijuana users exhibit lower levels of activity which can impede educational and professional success, and that smokers can have a harder time passing tests, obtaining drivers licenses, or landing jobs—may work better on teens, ironically, by treating them as rational adults.
“What’s Next” is the brain-child of conversations between the Colorado Health Department and more than 800 minors through focus groups, phone interviews, and school visits. Video ads will show pot as an potential obstacle to ambition and passion, emphasizing that it is not something worth building one’s identity around.
Anything’s better than another Reagan-era “This Is Your Brain On Drugs” video.
