Facebook: "Just Say Now" marijuana ad kerfuffle is a tempest in a pot leaf

Earlier today, I blogged about claims by marijuana legalization campaign "Just Say Now" that Facebook's decision to not run their ads was a form of censorship. My post included the group's arguments as to why they believed this to be the case. Andrew Noyes of Facebook tells Boing Boing that the decision was, in fact, in line with Facebook's stated ad policies—and that the visual element of the hemp leaf was what crossed the line: "We don't allow any images of drugs, drug paraphernalia, or tobacco in ad images on Facebook. 'Just Say Now' can continue to advertise on Facebook using a different image."

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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bklynchris

hmmmmm…maybe they should advertise as “reason to hate fb #101″.

but you know what, I do appreciate that I don’t see gyrating pink worms, who upon closer inspection reveal 100x’s/sec video clip loop of a penis slammin’ in and out of a lipstick’d mouth on my fb ad column too.

Now, if they could just do something about those 50% off pastel flavored macaroons adds I would feel this decision was perfectly fair.
Anonymous

I call BS – They have an ad on facebook for the TV show “Weeds” which has a marijuana leaf in the logo as well as graphic elements
Anonymous

@7
I had this discussion with my psych professor in college in a class on schizophrenia. He was talking about the correlation between cannabis use and developing mental illness. The relative risk of developing schizophrenia from cannabis use is about 2. The relative risk of developing schizophrenia from being born in the month of February is about 4. The relative risk of developing lung cancer from smoking tobacco is about 20. The connection between mental illness and cannabis is so weak to the point where it would not be noticed were it not such a hot and sensationalist thing to say.

Also, alcohol is a drug. Tobacco kills, but it kills you late in life, unlike alcohol. Facebook’s anti-drug policy is a farce as long as big alcohol is allowed to advertise on their site.
Daedalus

So my comment in the original post was right.

If they replaced the image of a pot leaf with the image of Christina Hendrick’s cleavage, Facebook would be happy to have the ad.

I think Just Say Now knows what it must do. For the good of the Cause.
Anonymous

Cannabis, like just about anything else, isn’t good for minors, and it isn’t good for all adults.

Some adults with addictive personalities take recreational smoking too far. Just like some adults with addictive personalities take drinking, gambling, sex, shopping, dieting, etc… too far.

The argument for legalization shouldn’t rest on the foundation that marijuana is harmless. It’s not.

The argument for legalization should rest on facts like these…

1) A significant percentage of otherwise law-abiding adults enjoy recreational smoking, and thier behavior causes relatively little harm to themselves or society.

2) The failed drug war has proved you cannot eliminate the demand for cannabis – for something low harm like cannabis, legalization and taxation is a far better approach than wasting all that money on police and judges and lawyers and jails, all while the black market makes the bad guys rich.

3) Black markets don’t check IDs and they don’t regulate what they’re selling. In my high school it was far easier to get drugs than alcohol, and what you got wasn’t always what it was supposed to be.
spcfgt

Facebook not allowing advertisements for illegal drugs… and this surprises you?

Sure, it should be legal. But you know what? It’s not.

Why should Facebook not be allowed to discriminate what ads it shows on its site? Why do you suddenly think that businesses can’t be run by their own rules within the law? (which this absolutely is.)

Just get over it. If they can’t advertise this way, put that money somewhere else.
- geekd
  
  #9, it’s not an ad for illegal drugs. It’s a political ad for the legalization of pot.
  
  When a website accepts some political ads and not others, that’s a problem.
  
  What if they only accepted ads for Democrats? Or only Republicans were OK? What if they only allowed ads for “Yes On 8″? Would you be OK with that?
  - spcfgt
    
    Oh you say it’s a POLITICAL ad, then? Why is Facebook running political ads, then?
    
    Should they be subject to the same rules TV is, then? Who will oversee this?
    
    That’s a stupid argument. At the end of the day, advertisers have to play by Facebook’s rules, which, at the end of the day, are whatever Facebook wants.
    
    Try running a pro-pot ad in some conservative newspaper. Gonna cry that it’s censorship there, too? Please.
- Anonymous
  
  If facebook were around 80 years ago, would you defend them for censoring ads calling for womens right to vote? If it were around 150 years ago, would you defend them for censoring ads calling for reform of slavery laws?
  
  Discussing legal reform is not illegal. Get your head out of your ass. This is a horrible unjust law that has destroyed the lives of millions of people. They’re not censoring a “marijuana advertisement”, they’re censoring a political viewpoint. There’s nothing illegal about discussing change.
zog

I’ve been using all sorts of ad blockers and facebook de-uglifiers so long I forgot some other people see ads on it.
adamnvillani

Most of the “pro-legalization” folks I know aren’t of the opinion that there are no possible downsides to marijuana, rather that prohibition creates more serious problems than the ones it solves- just like alcohol.

Exactly. I don’t like pot. I don’t smoke it. I tried it a few times when I was younger, didn’t like it, and never looked back. I’m also aware that people can become dependent on it, and I would be very surprised that smoking anything would be free of harmful side effects.

All that said, I absolutely favor legalization. Many people enjoy smoking marijuana or take it for medicinal purposes. The level of harm done is roughly comparable to that from tobacco, alcohol, motorbike racing, cheerleading, watching pornography, etc.

All of these are things with the potential for harm that are nonetheless legal. In a free society we allow people to participate in activities that carry risks. We are also able to regulate those risks to a degree. But we need to be wary of prohibition, not only out of a sense of liberty, but also because prohibition creates problems of its own. These problems are well-documented elsewhere, but they include a gross distortion of law enforcement priorities, the creation of a market for criminal drug gangs, etc.
ackpht

From where I sit it seems that laws against pot are barely enforced now- so I wonder just how sweeping the changes resulting from legalization would be.
- Cowicide
  
  From where I sit it seems that laws against pot are barely enforced now- so I wonder just how sweeping the changes resulting from legalization would be.
  
  Sit closer.
Purplecat

Hmmmm.

Perhaps I’m being paranoid, but this post reads like it was written under the influence of several lawyers.

Did you get a call from some very serious-minded people who wanted you to publish a certain version of events? Or are you even allowed to say that?
Anonymous

Images of a plant now constitute “bad thought”
Anonymous

those Munchies Studies have never been confirmed! *hides Doritos bag and wipes orange fingers on pants*
Also, get some beer and some cleaning products!
mood4amelody

I find this oddly ironic since facebook has an online game called Pot Farmer. Hm…
Zippy Gonzales

The Hempstore in Auckland, New Zealand found the same hassle with Facebook’s policies when trying to advertise their legitimate small business selling hemp shoes and stuff. Leaf or no leaf, no way, no how.

I support the Just Say Now campaign because Facebook does not understand that the Declaration of Human Rights applies to hippies too.
Anonymous

As a former drug addict who much preferred marijuana I dread the day when all this marijuana lobbying puts a smoke house on every corner, just like there are more bars than any other stores. I treasure my brain much more than I used to (why else would I be reading Boing Boing?)and don’t want to see more addiction dangled in my face. Yeah, this conflicts with my respect for people’s rights but I’m still uncomfortable about the whole movement.
- Cowicide
  
  As a former drug addict who much preferred marijuana I dread the day when all this marijuana lobbying puts a smoke house on every corner
  
  As a former Internet addict who much preferred boingboing.net I dread the day when all this Internet lobbying puts a hotspot on every corner.
  
  (could go on and on…..)
  
  Dude, glad you were able to get your addiction to the demon weed under control. I was once hit by an SUV when I was bike riding… maybe we should ban those too, huh?
  - Brainspore
    
    A better analogy is an alcoholic lamenting legal bars. I can empathize with his position, but that doesn’t mean the harm caused by the substance outweighs the harm caused by prohibition.
Cowicide

“We don’t allow any images of drugs, drug paraphernalia, or tobacco in ad images on Facebook.

Anyone notice they left out one of the more harmful drugs…. alcohol?

Sigh… I hate Facebook.
Anonymous

For the record- they don’t allow cigarette or alcohol ads, either.
vermiliongrrl

I find it exceedingly frustrating to defend the legalization of marijuana. There are places selling cigarettes and alcohol on street corners, along with junk food which isn’t the best for a person either.

Legalization wouldn’t mean that children could just puff away on joints and a young developing brain shouldn’t be subjected to alcohol or cigarettes either. Many posters have made the points I would make regarding this and other claims.

As long as pot is illegal it is supporting crime. Any amount of true research will show you that the benefits of pot far outweigh the downsides (like a glass of wine a day and not a bottle is good for the heart). People very high up in law enforcement and many street cops will tell you that legalization would have a positive change.

Perhaps the prisons would lose business…

That said, Facebook is a business and they can make rules about their site, we choose to be their customers and can choose not to be. I do however feel that this is a political ad and not a drug ad but you can try to reason with a brick wall but it’s probably not going to yield.
Anonymous

Anon â€¢ #7 posted a link to a large scale NIMH funded published study that concludes pot smoking in children under 15 doubles the probability of later developing schizophrenia as an adult.

Here is the link to the study, conducted by world experts in schizophrenia and published in peer reviewed journals again in case you missed it the first time.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC135493/pdf/1212.pdf

This study was designed to control for numerous other factors such as genetic disposition etc. This study concludes there is a higher correlation (2.0) between pot and schizophrenia than there is a correlation (1.82) between tobacco and lung cancer.

If pot is legalized for adults, it will become far easier to obtain by children, just like alcohol is in practice easy for kids to get. Pot, which has been proven to dramatically increase rates of schizophrenia, is something society has the obligation to oppose.
- strangefriend
  
  Christ, what an asshole.
- Anonymous
  
  Did you even read that study?
  
  This study could not establish whether adolescent cannabis use was a consequence of pre-existing psychotic symptoms rather than a cause
  
  That’s the SECOND SENTENCE IN THE STUDY.
  
  First of all, schizophrenia is a genetic condition, it’s something you’re born with. You can’t “catch” it. Marijuana cannot “cause” it. What these studies have been saying is that it can exacerbate symptoms in people who have a genetic predisposition to it. That means, if you have schizophrenia already, getting really stoned can trigger an episode. This makes sense, considering if you have schizophrenia, you’re pretty much bound to snap eventually, and it can be any number of triggers that causes it. By far the single biggest cause of a lapse is stress. The second most common trigger is alcohol. Anything can cause it, from the sound of dripping water, to flashing lights, to a knock on the head. If you are born schizophrenic you must learn to control your headspace, to keep your mental state intact. You need to be aware of what your triggers are and avoid them. Marijuana might be one of them. On the other hand, there’s a very good chance (which the studies admit) that the people who are having psychotic episodes while smoking weed may have been trying to self medicate, trying to calm themselves down. The weed didn’t cause the schizophrenia, but the schizophrenia caused them to smoke weed. Correlation doesn’t equal causation. 99% of all serial killers were known to wear shoes. Hitler wore shoes. Both Jesus and Gandhi did not wear shoes. The only conclusion then is that shoes drive you to kill people.
  
  Second of all, the numbers just don’t back these studies up at all. If marijuana increases the likelihood of schizophrenia 6 times higher than normal, and 60% of the population has tried it, that’s ten million people that should have started breaking out with schizophrenia. It just doesn’t happen.
- akbar56
  
  I can tell you right now it is a hell of a lot easier for kids to get illegal drugs than it is to get alcohol. Pulling MJ out of the black market into state controlled selling sources would make it alot harder for kids to get access to it.
Anonymous

Xeni,
I know it is all very trendy these days to be pro-legalization, but before boing-boing jumps on this bandwagon you should give fair consideration to the mounting scientific evidence that pot does in fact have, believe it or not serious and permanent side effects.

Some of the world’s top schizophrenia experts believe there is a connection between marijuana and mental illness. For young adults, smoking marijuana nearly doubles the risk of developing recurring psychosis, paranoia and hallucinations – the hallmarks of schizophrenia.

Today’s super-potent pot may be a big part of the problem. Modern growing techniques have dramatically increased the amount of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana – increasing the threat to the developing teenage brain.

Here is a link to just one of many, many scientific studies that have concluded that adolescence cannabis use increases the chances of development of psychosis in adulthood.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC135493/pdf/1212.pdf

The fact that pot use as a teenager dramatically increases your chances of developing schizophrenia is in reality an accepted scientific fact, since so many independent studies have reached this same exact conclusion.

The pro-legalization crowd of course denies this just like how the Tobacco industry before them denied tobacco caused cancer.

As one who lost a family member to this terrible incurable mental disease, considering this person happened to be a very heavy pot smoker from age 12, I feel this scientific evidence does not get the publicity it deserves. Maybe my family member was destined to develop this disease anyways even without pot smoking, who knows, but the idea that the pot triggered it is very sad, and the pro-legalization movement ignoring this possibility even with the mounting evidence proving it now beyond doubt is even sadder.
- Cynical
  
  As Cowicide above me laid out, correlation is not causation. If it were the case that marijuana use caused schizophrenia, we would have seen a massive spike in cases of mental illness in the 60s, when its use started to become mainstream, and again more recently when “super potent strains” supposedly compounded the problem. This hasn’t happened.
  
  A Liverpool John Moores University study found that “The annual rate of Cannabis Psychosis among English Cannabis Users was typically as low as one in 10,000. But although past-year Cannabis Usage climbed from 2.55 million (8.7%) in 1994 to 3.36 million (10.9%) in 2002/03, there were no clear trends in either schizophrenia (36,000-38,500 cases annually) or Cannabis Psychosis cases (280-380). Both predictions were disconfirmed…There was no support for the claim that cannabis use can cause psychosis, nor for a â€˜trueâ€™ Cannabis Pychosis. Instead, CP cases were arguably misdiagnoses of extreme cases of Acute Cannabis Intoxication and Harmful Cannabis Use, and/or Mental and Behavioural Disorders arising from other/multiple drug use.”
  
  But then why let the scientific method get in the way of a good sensationalist headline? Don’t you think it’s far more likely that people who are at risk of developing schizophrenia already are more likey both to self-medicate (with cannabis, alcohol or whatever other drugs they can get their hands on) and/or to be drawn to counter-cultural/disaffected elements of society where marijuana use is prevalent?
  
  Every “my cousin’s friend smoked and he went mental” story is singularly unhelpful in this context; it completely confuses correlation with causality. Yes, cannabis use is probably unhelpful in people who are becoming schizophrenic, but so is any other type of self-medicating behaviour.
  
  Funny that people never say “I know someone who drank alcohol and he became schizophrenic”, even though the American Psychiatric Association claims that 33% of all schizophrenics met the criteria for Alcohol Dependency at some stage in their lives. Chain-smoking cigarettes is a key indicator for suggesting that a given patient may have schizophrenia because the nicotine allows sufferers to temporarily alleviate their symptoms, but noone suggests that cigarettes cause mental illness, because the causal link does not exist. The fact that schizophrenics are more likely to smoke cigarettes does not mean that nicotine causes psychosis. Why is cannabis any different?
- Brainspore
  
  The pro-legalization crowd of course denies this just like how the Tobacco industry before them denied tobacco caused cancer.
  
  Most of the “pro-legalization” folks I know aren’t of the opinion that there are no possible downsides to marijuana, rather that prohibition creates more serious problems than the ones it solves- just like alcohol.
- dw_funk
  
  Correlation does not equal causation. Keep in mind that marijuana’s illegal status will necessarily create a self-selecting mechanism that eliminates any chance for a random sample, and thus eliminates any chance at verisimilitude. I’m a fan of the diathesis-stress model. At a young age, marijuana use can be quite a stressor, what with developing brains and all. For someone who is already genetically predisposed to schizophrenia, that stress might be all they need to be pushed over the edge. But that stressor could’ve been anything else: an abusive relationship, a nasty accident, or a death in the family.
  
  Regardless, nobody but the craziest activists think we should be giving this to kids. One of the benefits of legalization would be strict control over age limits. Drug dealers don’t card. People growing plants might be required to lock them up, laws would strictly punish those furnishing pot to kids, etc.
  
  As for the topic at hand, I think the degree to which marijuana activists are shut out of typical advertising venues is awfully stupid, but sometimes it almost seems like these sort of campaigns thrive on getting rejected. All that publicity at no cost.
- Xeni Jardin
  
  I’m not pro-anything on this issue, just blogging about it. I don’t smoke pot, and I have some pretty strong feelings about the proliferation of skeevy dispensaries all over my city (Los Angeles). It’s funny to be accused of now being “pro-pot”!
  - Cowicide
    
    You could have been accused of worse. Actually, in that thread you were ironically accused of being a prude. [snicker]
- pointfour
  
  The reason teenagers can get pot right now is that drug dealers don’t care about who they sell to. If pot was legalised and sold in stores it could have an age limit like alcohol.
  
  Legalized pot would also take away a large source of income from criminals and give it to the government in the form of taxes, as well as saving police forces millions each year.
- Cowicide
  
  For young adults, smoking marijuana nearly doubles the risk of developing recurring psychosis, paranoia and hallucinations – the hallmarks of schizophrenia.
  
  So tell me then, are you all on board to criminalize alcohol? And, if not. Why NOT?
  
  Bring on the alcohol prohibition again, yes?
  
  Some of the worldâ€™s top schizophrenia experts believe there is a connection between marijuana and mental illness.
  
  The correlation between marijuana use and psychosis doesn’t necessarily mean that marijuana caused the psychosis. Many of the researchers made this clear in their findings, but mainstream reporters left it out.
  
  Mainstream reporters also failed to observe that massive increases in marijuana use over the past century have not corresponded with increased rates of psychosis.
  
  Smells like agenda to me, sorry.
  
  As one who lost a family member to this terrible incurable mental disease, considering this person happened to be a very heavy pot smoker from age 12, I feel this scientific evidence does not get the publicity it deserves.
  
  Iâ€™m sorry for your loss, but that person probably would have had mental illness with or without pot. And, you have to wonder why this person was such a heavy pot smoker from such a young age anyway.
  
  Iâ€™ve seen severe illness from a friend who took Advil, but I certainly donâ€™t think his individual experience and some loose connections from a flimsy study make me inclined to criminalize Advil, sorry.
- Owen
  
  Anonymous,
  
  We have two choices when it comes to drugs like pot or alcohol – we can regulate them, or we can not regulate them.
  
  During alcohol prohibition, the alcohol that you would get varied widely in quality. Some of it might have been good, if you were lucky. If you were unlucky, it would be wood alcohol and you would go blind, or it would be toxic and you would die. That is what happens with a lack of regulation. A lack of regulation is what we have for pot right now.
  
  If pot were regulated, you could put limits on the amount of THC that was allowed. You could allow pot with less THC, and require labeling. You could make pot legal only for people over 18 or 21, making it harder for teenagers to get. Look at what’s happened to alcohol since prohibition ended – you know how much alcohol is in drinks, you know they’re safe, and they’re tough for teenagers to get.
  
  By talking about how risky today’s pot is, particularly for teenagers, and framing it as an argument against legalization, you’re effectively saying that our current policy isn’t working, and that’s why we should keep doing it.