Lead photo via Twitter user Dewey Farms
As legal cannabis continues to make headway integrating into society’s mainstream, industry entrepreneurs and regulators in 420-friendly states have had to switch gears, turning their collective attention away from public smoking arrests and small-time dealing, to the bureaucratic red tape wrapped around issues like licensing, pesticide testing, and driver safety. As part of that shift from criminal concerns to administrative action, new studies from every corner of the legal weed world have finally been able to shine some quantitative insights into what’s happening on the ground with the previously outlawed plant.
In a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers from the Oregon Health Authority sussed out the facts behind one of the green rush’s most controversial topics: advertising. Using federal funds from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, public health officials surveyed over 4,000 Oregonians about their exposure to cannabis advertisements in the first year after legal sales started, and found that while danks ads were plenty prevalent across the state, the commercial pushes didn’t necessarily…