Medical marijuana is now being advertised on the Bay State’s airwaves — with an advocacy group promoting pot on FM radio without the restrictions that dispensaries face — a development alarming some critics.

“Did you know you do not have to smoke medical marijuana to enjoy its medical benefits?” one of the radio ads by New England Grass Roots Institute in Quincy states. “This all-natural herb can be infused into almost any food or beverage. Used properly, medical marijuana adds to a healthy lifestyle. Medical Marijauna: Is it right for you? Talk to your doctor, then talk to us.”

State regulations bar dispensaries from making any advertising claims on “the safety or efficacy of marijuana unless supported by substantial evidence,” or “for any purpose other than to treat a debilitating medical condition.”

Institute founder Mike Fitzgerald said those rules don’t apply to him.

“We’re trailblazing,” said Fitzgerald, who said he has a background in construction but has worked in the pot “industry” for years as a grower and in pot dispensaries in California.

“We’re the first cannabis institute,” Fitzgerald said. “We’re really focused on people who have never seen cannabis before. Since the American Medical Association isn’t teaching anything, we thought we need to step in.”

Fitzgerald’s ads aired on 92.9 FM in Boston this weekend. Efforts to reach the radio station yesterday were unsuccessful. A spokesman for the attorney general’s office declined to comment yesterday. A spokeswoman for the Department of Public Health, which oversees dispensaries, could not be reached last night.

A consultant for dispensaries, Scott Hawkins, told the Herald that licensed dispensaries are wary of advertising because of the restrictions.

“It would be perceived as violating the intent of the rules … because they are not supposed to be generating demand,” Hawkins said.

Wayne Sampson, executive director of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, said the ads, though apparently legal, are another challenge for law enforcement.

“It certainly doesn’t seem that if this was truly a medical issue that they would have to be advertising for clients,” said Sampson, a retired Shrewsbury police chief. “This is purely a commercial operation.”

The Department of Public Health last Friday announced the locations of 20 proposed marijuana dispensaries, where patients — with their doctors’ permission — can buy the drug. The Massachusetts Medical Society has warned marijuana is medically untested and poses health risks.

Fitzgerald’s Quincy “learning center” offers courses in “Medicinal Cannabis Science,” “Horticultural Grow Lab,” “Methods of Extraction,” “Methods of Consumption,” “Cooking with Cannabis,” “Cannabusiness” and “Massachusetts Medical Marijuana Law.”

A medical marijuana user himself, Fitzgerald said he wants to change people’s perceptions about pot products.

“You ask me if I’m worried about sending the wrong message, I kind of get insulted by that,” he said about his ads. “I’m trying to change that image … I don’t want the kids near it. I take this very, very seriously.”

Bill Downing of the pro-marijuana group MassCann/NORML said advertising will grow as the marijuana industry grows in Massachusetts, and the hydroponic growing industry grows with it.

“It’s just a predictable part of the normalization of society’s attitude toward cannabis,” Downing said.