Op-Ed: Billboards advertising pot broke Prop. 64’s promise. Don’t go back on the pledge to protect teens

By The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board

Shielding teens from increased exposure to marijuana was a key selling point of the legalization plan California voters approved in 2016. The measure included “toughest-in-the-nation protections for children,” proponents said, by banning cannabis advertising aimed at those under age 21 and restricting where billboards can be placed.

Unfortunately, in the five years since voters passed Proposition 64, it’s been a nonstop game of whack-a-mole to try to keep the pot industry and cannabis regulators faithful to these promises. And success has been mixed.

First, a prominent cannabis website found a loophole in the law and started throwing billboards up alongside major freeways, even though Proposition 64 says licensed marijuana businesses can’t advertise on billboards along interstate highways. How did Weedmaps get away with it? Turns out the $1.5-billion company isn’t a licensed cannabis business — it’s a website that advertises cannabis businesses. So the ban on advertising on interstate highway billboards does not apply.

Several lawmakers — including then-Assemblyman, now-Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta — wrote a bill to close that loophole in the billboard ban. But it never passed.

Then state cannabis regulators blew an even bigger hole in the freeway billboard ban. They claimed that the sentence in Proposition 64 that says licensed cannabis businesses can’t advertise on billboards “on an Interstate Highway or State Highway which crosses the border of any other state” was meant to discourage interstate commerce, not to prohibit advertising marijuana on interstate highways. [Read More @ The LA Times]