Marijuana Legalization Campaign Plans To Educate On Responsible Consumption

Marijuana users are as lazy, lethargic, and in complete denial of the drug’s possible negative effects — or at least that’s how the media portray them. Consume Responsibly plans to break this stigma with the perfect combination of humor and knowledge. The ad campaign was sparked by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s frightening recollection of her experiences with a weed-infused candy bar. It touches on the laws, limits, and responsibilities that come with marijuana use, reminding us all that “if you’re gonna use it, at least use it right.”

Throughout America, marijuana is either available as a legal product or well on its way to becoming so. Unfortunately, drug education campaigns have long been run with the agenda of keeping people off drugs rather than accurately informing on drug’s effects. The result: an American population largely clueless on what’s fact and what’s hearsay when it comes to marijuana use. While they may say ignorance is bliss, the truth is it’s also dangerous and the news is constantly flooded with stories of users who had bad experiences with recreational pot. “That’s where the Consume Responsibly campaign comes in,” Mason Tvert, MPP director of communications, said in a statement.

Consume Responsibly plans to target educate the public on three major aspects of marijuana use that are often the source of much confusion: Law, Limit, and Responsibly. In the law section of their campaign, Consume Responsibly highlights the legislature regulating marijuana’s use and distribution that many residents of legal states may not be aware of. In a similar facet, knowing that most individuals' drug education came from peer advice or trial and error, the limit section of the campaign both acknowledges marijuana’s potential for misuse and suggests ways to avoid this.

Lastly, in an effort to break the negative stigma surrounding marijuana and its users, the campaign lists some of the civic responsibilities that come hand in hand with using the drug. This includes not pressuring or tricking others into using marijuana and doing their best to keep products containing the drug far away from the reach of children and pets.

Consume Responsibly discusses the recently popular but largely misunderstood topic of edible marijuana and approaches the subjects with ads that “highlights the need to ‘start low and go slow’ when consuming marijuana edibles,” Tvert explained in a statement. “It can take as long as two hours to experience the effects of marijuana-infused products, so be patient,” advises the website. “Ingesting too much marijuana can be a very unpleasant experience, so be careful.”

Hopefully, the campaign will have more success than alcohol’s Drink Responsibly’s ads, which “routinely promote product branding and reinforce the product promotion in the rest of the ad," Katherine Clegg Smith, a researcher who wrote a paper on the subject, told Fast Coexist. Although the campaign is currently run in Colorado, MMP plan to expend their ads as more states legalize the drug for recreational use.