When Andrew Freeman, former Lt. Governor of Colorado and Marijuana Czar testified in front of the Senate Health Policy committee during the 2017 session, he told the committee that an important part of regulating a medicinal cannabis program was an education campaign.

The definition of “educate” is to enlighten and inform, and the bill to implement amendment 2, otherwise known as SB8A, set aside $5M for this important task.

But did the legislature “get” what Mr. Freeman meant when he talked about an educational campaign for medical cannabis? It doesn’t seem to look that way.

Here is how the mandate came down from SB8A, the implementation bill for Amendment 2, now Article X, Section 29 of the Florida Constitution:

(3) STATEWIDE IMPAIRED DRIVING EDUCATION CAMPAIGN. —

(a) The Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles shall implement a statewide impaired driving education campaign to raise awareness and prevent marijuana-related and cannabis-related (Note: is there a difference?) impaired driving and may contract with one or more vendors to implement the campaign. The Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles may use television messaging, radio broadcasts, print media, digital strategies, social media, and any other form of messaging deemed necessary and appropriate by the department to implement the campaign.

$4.9M of the five million was given to the state’s Highway Safety Office, a division of the Florida Highway Patrol, who handed the funds (presumably without an Intent to Bid procedure) to PP+K, an advertising firm in Tampa that also handles the state’s mammoth lottery campaigns. The other $100K went to commission a University of Florida survey to identify what residents know about impaired driving. (You’d think they would have done that first, before they developed the ad campaign).

What they came up with, is the now omnipresent “Drive Baked, Get Busted” which looks strikingly like an ad campaign created by the Los Angeles sheriff’s department for their new “Recreational Use” law which came into effect in California on January 1, 2018, which was called, “Drive Baked, Get Booked”

The first question that comes to mind is, ‘Why would we spend $4.9M to plagiarize an ad campaign on impaired driving regarding recreational use when the campaign was supposed to be about medical cannabis use?’

The average medical cannabis patient in Florida is 54 years old and doesn’t even use a word like “baked”, and yet the campaign media kit states that the target audience is “between 18 and 34, and between 55 and 74”. Looks like they are missing the mark. It doesn’t even look like they did their research.

The two commercials show a man in a car suddenly hallucinating seeing disappointed people in around his car and the second commercial showing a young woman with friend playing “keep away with her keys and she finds her motor skill greatly and frustratingly suppressed. Unfortunately for the good folks at PP+K, those things are more stereotypical of reefer madness and anti-cannabis ad campaigns than actual reality. In fact, it is actually very hard to prove cannabis impairment. That is why $500K was set aside to teach law enforcement how to spot actual cannabis impairment. Blood tests are not reliable, and no breathalyzer test could prove impairment. Just testing for THC wouldn’t work because THC with CBD mitigates the THC effects, and many folks, after regular medicinal use, can acclimate to the THC. Someone who is affected by THC can walk a straight line, lean back and touch his nose, and very easily catch keys thrown in the air. And without hallucinations.

Even the ad copy has bad research. It claims that,” Unlike alcohol, marijuana has no intoxication limit”. With all due respect, that is very wrong. Just ask the grieving parents of a child who dies of alcohol poisoning in college.

The video ad campaign was able to squeeze in a website with the $4.9 million purchase price.

Even Rep. Ray Rodrigues, who wrote the mostly prohibitionist language of the bill, sees problems with the ad campaign. As reported in Politico, he said the campaign, which only focuses on a level of impaired driving associated with recreational use, should have better reflected use of the medicinal drug under the new law.

Nothing is mentioned in the campaign about how long the effects last, or what you should do if you think you are impaired, nor does it draw any analogy to alcohol or prescription drug use. It should be mentioned, that, just like the warning labels on the side of bottles of opioids or any other medicine that may impair your mental or motor processes, that you should take precautions if you take this medicine and drive or use heavy machinery.

In the vernacular of today’s youth, “If you’re high, lay low.” If you think your impaired, you don’t have to drive. Wait under it wears off (1-3 hours for inhaled, more hours if ingested) or get a ride from a sober friend or an uber and play it safe.

That’s what educational messages sound like.

That will be $4.9M, please.