In the last decade, when pot-law reform advocates have faced off
with the status quo on equal footing, pot reform has won. Initiative
backers in a dozen states, for instance, have spent big bucks passing
medical-marijuana measures despite fierce opposition from federal
officials. Nevertheless, the adult recreational use of pot (as opposed
to medical use) doesn’t have majority support to pass in any state.
Before voters will ever approve that sort of proposal, pot advocates
must first change attitudes toward the drug by going toe to toe with
the White House’s multimillion-dollar antidrug media campaign.
The national ACLU has decided to fund a pilot effort. Beginning on
Valentine’s Day, television viewers in the Seattle media market will
begin seeing a slick, 30-minute pot-reform infomercial.
Hosted by television travel guru Rick Steves, Marijuana: It’s
Time for a Conversation will initially be available on Comcast On
Demand cable, says Alison Holcomb, director of the ACLU of Washington’s
Marijuana Education Project, which produced the show. Holcomb says the
ACLU plans to spend at least $20,000 per week airing the program around
the state. Three local network affiliates (KOMO, KING, and KIRO) have
already received and approved copies of the script, she says. However,
none of the station’s advertising managers could be reached for
comment. “We’re working with the stations to figure out what times are
available,” Holcomb says. By the end of 2008, she expects the program
to begin airing in more conservative regions, including Pierce County,
Clark County, and greater Spokane.
“It’s good to be in a corner of the country where we can test-market
for this,” said Steves at an advanced screening. The national ACLU,
which opposes punitive marijuana laws they believe chip away at civil
liberties, chose Washington because polls suggest reforming marijuana
laws is most feasible here. (Disclosure: I used to work for the ACLU of
Washington.)
The program makes its case against pot prohibition by chronicling
the racial hysteria behind the drug’s criminalization in the 1930s and
examining the impact of modern-day pot laws, under which about 800,000
people are arrested in the U.S. each year.
The format—an infomercial with the requisite gregarious host
and an audience that robotically claps on cue—is clearly geared
to strike a chord with its target demographic: moms, a group
traditionally wary of marijuana but proven to buy products sold on
TV.
But, to fit within cable and station programming guidelines, the
show cannot advocate for any specific legal reforms. It must settle for
encouraging viewers to start a discussion on the issue and prompting
them to visit Marijuana Conversation.org for more
information.
The absence of overt advocacy actually makes the program
compelling—it encourages the viewer to hang on and find out what
he or she is supposed to do. Although, the potential for backlash does
exist. When the program wraps up without defining its goals, moms may
wonder what exactly the ACLU wants. Does the civil-liberties
organization want to allow adults to smoke pot in the privacy of their
bedrooms, or is this part of a nebulous liberalization agenda that
would make drugs more available?
Lieutenant Governor Brad Owen, the state’s leading critic of
drug-reform efforts, worries that the infomercial turns pot smokers
into politically sympathetic characters. “When you start running ads
and say, ‘Golly, gee whiz, look at all the things happening to people
who get [unfairly] arrested,’ you start putting out a story saying
there is no problem with marijuana,” says Owen. These messages lower
the perception of pot’s harm, he adds, thus increasing the rate of
marijuana use, especially by kids.
“The show doesn’t encourage anyone to use marijuana,” Holcomb
responds. “This show acknowledges risks associated with heavy marijuana
use, and no one is saying that marijuana use is a good thing.”
“The question we are positing is this: Is criminalizing marijuana
use actually increasing public safety and decreasing health risks,”
Holcomb says, “or is it hurting us on both counts?” 