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Legalization is happening. States are rapidly realizing that a legal cannabis market holds a number of benefits including massive tax revenues, reduced black market sales, and open access to a drug for individuals that can actually benefit from it. Even in states lacking legalization (New York for example), there is movement towards decriminalizing possession and reducing it to a hefty fine instead.

But that movement is now being attacked for what might happen in the future because of it. Former Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy is attempting to raise a ruckus over the possibility that “Big Marijuana” will likely market its products to children and teens. Already, he argues, marijuana shops sell candies, cookies, and lollipops which appeal to and attract kids. Big Think has a brief article on his statements here. He goes on to claim that Big Tobacco is likely to step into the industry and get up to its old tricks again attracting kids to its products with sleek ads and questionable marketing campaigns.

In short, he’s attempting to claim that any legalization should be halted so that this can’t happen. And while he’s a fairly solitary voice at the moment, you can bet someone will decide that he’s got a point and others will begin parroting his concerns.

Kennedy may simply be looking for attention given his obscurity now that he’s not even a Congressman. He certainly knows enough about drug use to speak on the industry — having admitted to tangling with cocaine as a teenager, illicit drugs and alcohol abuse in college, and OxyContin abuse as recently as 2006. His experience with addiction has made him an advocate against marijuana legalization. But if history shaped his beliefs on illicit drug policy, one certainly wonders what company marketing campaign convinced him to take up cocaine as a teen.

In any case, we’re not trying to make a direct statement on legalization (though it’s hard not to), only that these statements sound eerily familiar to anyone following debates on electronic cigarettes. The existence of candy, fruity, and exciting flavors among electronic cigarettes is treated as an affront to all basic human decency. The cost of maybe attracting kids is automatically assumed to be too high compared to the benefit of offering freedom of choice to adult consumers. But this argument has trouble standing up in a reality where kids will use the devices regardless of the flavors available and the marketing that surrounds them.

I, for one, have spent time with 20- and 30-something year old stoners several orders of magnitude less mature than your average 14-year-old (that’s basically what the second half of college ends up being for a great many). It’s not unexpected that they might send hours watching cartoons power snacking on S’mores Pop-Tarts and special brownies (here’s where I claim that I was only there for the cartoons and S’mores). Isn’t it possible that marketing with drawn characters, candy flavors, and bright colors might appeal to “adults” — and that when these images appear only in adult-focused atmospheres (gas stations, magazines, and e-cig companies’ own websites for instance) that they maybe aren’t designed to catch kids?

The same attacks were made against an electronic cigarette e-liquid company not long ago when political advocates used EJuiceMonkey’s logo to claim that the industry at large was trying to attract kids with cartoon figures. At the time, said logo would only ever be seen by those already on the company’s website or those connected to the company via Facebook — both groups of which were made up primarily of adults looking for e-liquid to purchase. To this day, the EJuiceMonkey‘s logo remains blacked out in protest of the ridiculous claims about their image.

Ultimately, it seems possible some irresponsible companies (in both industries) might produce imagery that appeals to a younger demographic than we’re all comfortable with. That’s the goal of almost any successful marketing endeavor, and there should certainly be controls and penalties set in place to prevent egregious missteps. However, the possibility that kids might find something cool that is reserved for adults (option the first criteria for what’s cool) should not be enough to place us at complete odds with that industry — especially when there are benefits to be had by its presence.

Yet again, there are some significant similarities in the tales being told by both the budding electronic cigarette industry and the boiling marijuana industry. And as much as both sides seem eager to distance themselves from one another, it seems likely that strides for either will be strides for both.