Results: Higher average exposure to MM advertising was associated with higher average use, intentions to use, positive expectancies, and negative consequences. Similarly, higher rates of change in MM advertising exposure were associated with higher rates of change in use, intentions, expectancies, and consequences over seven years.
Conclusions: Results suggest that exposure to MM advertising may not only play a significant role in shaping attitudes about marijuana, but may also contribute to increased marijuana use and related negative consequences throughout adolescence. This highlights the importance of considering regulations for marijuana advertising, similar to regulations in place for the promotion of tobacco and alcohol in the U.S.
(Dalgarno Institute Comment: Permission models always and without exception create a level of psycho-social contagion leading to a higher chance of product engagement. Permission is still the most effective founding motivator for consumption in play and corporations have known this for well over 150 years.
American writer and cultural critic Ambrose Beirce commented around the turn of the 20th century that, “A Corporation is an ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.” These corporations have also understood (and particularly the addiction for profit industries) like alcohol and tobacco, that kids must be your target audience. Big Tobacco player R.J. Reynolds stated in in 1975 that, “Share penetration among 14 –24 age market….represents tomorrow’s cigarette business”. And the now famous principle authored by CEO Bennet Leslow of the Brook Group is that, “If you are really and truly not going to sell to children, you are going to be out of business in 30 years.”
Big Tobacco 2.0 – Big Cannabis – are desperate to get their addiction for profit product into the currents of trade, alongside the other socially acceptable drugs that do the greatest harms (because they are legal and socially acceptable) alcohol and tobacco. As you see with the above study and many others, the pernicious process is only the beginning of the harms that will come from this highly engineered substance.)
