A guest op-ed in The Sacrament Bee by Marvin Seppala, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, describes the need for preventing youth marijuana use, beginning with banning advertising:
It’s one thing to decriminalize cannabis, but it’s another to encourage use with marketing and advertising that reaches kids.
And that’s the problem: Almost all commercial advertising makes its way to the eyes and ears of children. If we care about public health, we should ban all cannabis ads.
Dr. Seppala continues:
The entire point of advertising is to motivate people to want, and then purchase, a product, and to shape public perceptions about the product. We also know companies that market addictive substances benefit from reaching young people. The younger that people begin using, the more they purchase over a lifetime, the more profits they generate, and — unfortunately — the greater their risk for developing addiction.
Read more at The Sacramento Bee.