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Connecticut Asks Massachusetts Cannabis Companies to Remove Billboards

Connecticut Asks Massachusetts Cannabis Companies to Remove Billboards

Connecticut is asking Massachusetts to stop displaying cannabis billboards on the state border

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong has sent a letter to seven Massachusetts cannabis companies asking them to remove their billboards from along Connecticut highways.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong has sent a letter to seven Massachusetts cannabis companies asking them to remove their billboards from along Connecticut highways, saying that the ads are illegal in the state under its adult-use cannabis law passed earlier this year, Western Mass News reports. Under Connecticut’s legalization law, cannabis advertising is prohibited unless 90% of the audience is 21-or-older.

The Attorney General’s Office clarified to Western Mass News that the letter is a request not a demand.

Erik Williams, chief operating officer of Canna Provisions, which is based in Massachusetts and uses billboard advertising on the highway, said that the company has no intention of removing the ads, despite the letter from Tong.

“If we capitulated to every prohibitionist’s whim or request, I would say that we would not have adult use cannabis in Massachusetts and certainly it wouldn’t be coming in Connecticut. … I believe that this is too far reaching of an insinuation that they have made against our company and other advertisers, against marketing firms, and against the other folks who have also gotten those letters.” – Williams to Western Mass News

In the letter, Tong said the billboards encourage customers to cross state lines with cannabis products, which is a federal crime, but Williams said that was not the case.

“We are continuing to talk to them and I told him that this is an important thing for us to look for,” Williams said in the report, “and we also want to really see that the Connecticut market actually thrives as well.”

Canna Provisions has no intention to take the billboard down, Williams said.

The report does not indicate whether the other six Massachusetts companies with billboards in Connecticut plan to honor the attorney general’s request.

United Nations calls for global ban on cannabis advertising

United Nations calls for global ban on cannabis advertising

United Nations cannabis advertising law

The United Nations on Thursday called for a global ban on all advertising that promotes cannabis products, in a move that it said could mimic its efforts to lead a global effort to limit tobacco marketing and use.

The UN can only recommend such a move, and it would be up to member nations to implement and enforce any kind of advertising ban.

A comprehensive ban on advertising, promoting and sponsoring cannabis would ensure that public health interests prevail over business interests,” the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime wrote in its annual World Drug Report.

“Such a ban would need to apply across all jurisdictions,” the global agency added.

The agency noted in its report that pot products “have almost quadrupled in strength in the United States of America and have doubled in Europe in the last two decades.”

Even as the products have become more potent over the last 20 years, the percentage of adolescents who view the drug as harmful has decreased by as much as 40 percent over the past 20 years, the UNODC said.

It added that marijuana can lead to mental health disorders in long-term, heavy users.

“Aggressive marketing of cannabis products with a high THC content by private firms and promotion through social-media channels; can make the problem worse,” the UN officials wrote in their report.

The UNODC did not specify how such a ban would work, but noted that “the measures could work in a way similar to the provisions of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.”