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ABSTRACT
Colorado legalized marijuana use for recreational purposes by adults over 21 in 2012. Our goal is to examine the first major communication campaign (called Good-To-Know) mounted by the state government with the objective of informing the public regarding regulatory and safety precautions surrounding newly legal use. Methods: We assess the content of campaign’s central messaging qualitatively by comparing its major themes in terms of criteria developed from the literature and the campaign’s own goals. Results: With minor exceptions (lack of audience segmentation; limiting the focus to generating knowledge) Colorado’s Good-To-Know campaign rates well when assessed against specific criteria for effective drug communication campaigns as well as its own goals. Conclusions: We conclude that although there were minor limitations to this campaign, policy makers and activists should think proactively about messaging content in states where legalization is imminent. And that more research on legal drug use messaging needs to occur.
Acknowledgements
We thank Jessie Luna for helpful comments on the presentation of our findings and Michael Lacy for editing our paper thoroughly.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in thi s article.
Notes
1 Based on Facebook and Twitter as Instagram does not date posts