 You may have already heard the major social media news: Twitter is now allowing cannabis advertisements!
Not only that, but they’re also offering financial incentives for cannabis brands to advertise now, by price matching. The newly updatd drug policy page on Twitter states that they will now “permit approved Cannabis (including CBD– cannabinoids) advertisers to target the United States.” This had already been allowed in Canada, where cananbis is legal on their national level, but until now that was not possible in the U.S. MJBizDaily said an email they viewed specified that Twitter are “allowing advertisers to promote brand preference and informational cannabis-related content” for CBD products, THC products and “cannabis-related products and services” such as “delivery services, labs, growing technology, search engines (and) events.” There are some restrictions on the new policy, though. First, while cannabis related content, such as products and services, are allowed, promotion of selling actual cannabis is not allowed. Only cannabis related products and services. Not the bud itself. Another restriction is thta the companies may not advertise products that contain more than 0.3% THC, so that puts it almost in CBD catagory. The ads also cannot make any health claims or show any images of consuming cannabis. There are additionally restrictions regarding who the ads are targeting. Cannabis ads must only target the locations where the business is licensed, and only advertise cannabis related ads to people age 21 and older. Overall, though, even with these restrictions, this new policy change marks a huge step for the cannabis industry, a total game changer! Twitter is now the first of all the major social media platforms to take this step. Sites such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, all have tight bans on cannabis advertisements. The change is one of many since Twitter was taken over recently by Elon Musk. From the begining of Musk’s announcing his plans to take over Twitter, Musk has made it clear he intends to make many changes to the social media platform. But Musk never publically said anything about planning to change this particular ban on cannabis ads, so the announcement came as a bit of a surprise. A surprise, but not a shock. That’s because Musk has publically shown support for cannabis in past; most famously, he smoked during an on air interview with Joe Rogan back in 2018. Part of the support Musk is now rolling out for the cannabis industry includes a finacial incentive Twitter is offering to kick off the ban being lifted. Musk has offered to value match-up on every advertising dollar spent over the next month. So if you spend $1000, Twitter will match it, and you’ll essentially get a value of $2000 of advertising with them. They’re extending this match up all the way up to $250,000 in advertisement spending with them. This offer is only good through March 31st, 2023. To extend this value to all of those in the industry, Twitter has said they will not require a minimum spending amount for cannabis companies. That’s fantastic for all the smaller cannabis companies out there, who can now afford to get in on the advertising, even if they only have a few dollars to spend on it. The co-founder of the Cannabis Media Council, Amy Deneson, told news site, Politico, “That’s one of the most generous things that an advertiser and publisher relationship can kick off with.” The very first cannabis company to jump on the new permissions and incentives was multistate operator: Trulieve Cannabis Corp., who launched a multistate campaign just after the announcements were made. They certainly aren’t the only ones, though, as many more have already followed suit. Online cananbis marketing resource company AdCann says that last year there were more than 20 million tweets about cannabis on Twitter, which makes cannabis one of the most talked-about topics on there. With that type of popularity, cannabis advertisements are sure to show up more and more on the platform. Kate Lynch of Curaleaf said, …”we are hopeful [this] will serve as a catalyst for other social media platforms to follow suit.” In addition to hoping more social media sites will also lift their bans, Twitter’s change on policy stance should also help in the overall cannabis legalization movement in this country, by reducing stigma, and moving towards more main-stream normalization for this truly amazing plant. Comments are closed.
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