Hearst Newspapers Attempt to Undo the Damage They Did to Marijuana?

"Hashish Goads Users to Bloodlust!" was a typical headline seen in Hearst newspapers in the 1930s when the "yellow journalism" outlet pushed to make marijuana illegal, possibly because Pancho Villa, whose army favored the weed, seized Hearst's property in Mexico. Next thing you knew, the Marijuana Tax Act had passed, effectively making cannabis hemp—newly known by the scary word "marijuana"—illegal in the US. 

Now Hearst has teamed with the cannabis industry and other groups under the umbrella of the Cannabis Media Council to publish ads that seek to mainstream the use of cannabis in the media. 

According to Adweek, the work—under the trademarked tagline “I’m High Right Now”— aims to be the “Got Milk” of the cannabis industry, targeting boomers and Gen X as the demo “most affected by previous propaganda” about cannabis, according to Allison Disney, a CMC board member who spearheaded the creative via Chicago-based agency Receptor Brands with an assist from Sister Merci.

"Given the restrictions on cannabis marketing—brands can’t buy ads from tech giants like Meta, Instagram or TikTok and are shut out of most traditional outlets—the sales-free pitch for weed wants to build awareness and rebrand the space," Adweek continues. The campaign is launching first in the Connecticut Post as a print piece, given that the state recently kicked off its adult-use cannabis sales. “I’m High Right Now” will appear in more "legacy media" via a relationship between the CMC and Hearst Newspapers and its in-house ad marketing agency 46 Mile.

Hearst now publishes Greenstate, a channel dedicated to the topic to “provide accurate information about the plant, dispel myths and to help readers understand its health benefits and lifestyle options,” according to Rose Fulton, principal of 46 Mile, part of the San Francisco Chronicle. Programmatic ads are coming shortly via the data-driven company Surfside, mostly in California markets. 

Hearst's involvement seems to be a bit of desperation move to keep newspapers alive in the days of waning advertising dollars coming their way. In a telling moment, as I looked up the Adweek article, their Twitter feed was lamenting staff layoffs at that trade journal, which has been doing a lot of coverage of cannabis industry.  

“This campaign, and future campaigns from the Cannabis Media Council, will not only combat outdated prohibitionist propaganda, but serve as a necessary element of the industry,” said Laura Fogelman, vice president of communications and public affairs at PAX, a Cannabis Media Council Visionary Donor that has also supported California NORML. “We need to show publications and media outlets that the cannabis industry is serious and mature, has resources and will purchase ads. That will encourage more publishers, previously apprehensive to support cannabis, to run our ads and marketing messages. This campaign is the first step to achieving that goal.” 

Got Pot? 

"Got Milk?" ad featuring actresses
Lisa Kudrow and Jennifer Aniston

This isn't the first time that a group has tried to address the stigma of cannabis users' portrayals in the media. The Drug Policy Alliance ran a campaign several years back putting out photos of marijuana smokers who weren't the typical scruffy hippies you generally saw adorning articles about pot. The CMC campaign also picks up on the "Just Say Know" line that I used to promote a DPA drug education conference in 1999, to counter Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" slogan. A "Got Hemp?" campaign ran in the late 1990s. 

It's interesting that the CMC should choose the much duplicated 30-year-old "Got Milk" campaign for its model. That campaign enlisted celebrities to appear with milk mustaches in a series of ads that were popular with California's dairy farmers and the public, but failed to increase milk consumption. Other factors, like lactose intolerance (the reason Tokin' Woman Whoopi Goldberg didn't join the campaign until a lactose-free milk was added) to environmental concerns about dairy cows, kept sales figures flat. Cannabis arguably is on the upswing in acceptance and use, so it shouldn't have those problems weighing it down. 

The CMC campaign doesn't use celebrities, but rather a series of caricature-style photos of: a Black senior couple touting cannabis's ability to enhance sexual pleasure; a divorced lady gardener asking if she can grow her own; an elderly gent holding a golf club countering the myth that cannabis makes you inactive; and a gray-haired Asian lady in a running clothes asking, "Am I allowed to light up on a walk?" 

Unfortunately there isn't much useful information on any of the partner sites, and the fact that 100 cannabis companies have contributed to this campaign in lieu of (mostly) supporting activist groups like NORML that do have lots of good information on their sites, and work for greater legalization and the rights of cannabis consumers, is troubling. It's fine for the cannabis industry to pool their resources towards an awareness campaign, I'm just not impressed with this one. For one thing, it might try to enlist actual celebrities; there are plenty of them on the pages of this blog or at my website www.VeryImportantPotheads.com.

The group might do better emulating the "Does She or Doesn't She?" Clairol campaign of the 1950s-70s, which speculated about whether or not women dyed their hair. According to

hubspot.com, "The first time Clairol asked this question in 1957, the answer was 1 to 15—as in, only 1 in 15 people were using artificial hair color. Just 11 years later, the answer was 1 of 2, according to TIME Magazine. The ad was apparently so successful that some states stopped requiring women to denote hair color on their driver's license....Clairol did the opposite of what most marketers would do: they didn't want every woman on the street running around saying they were using their product. They wanted women to understand that their product was so good that people couldn't tell if they were using it or not." 

"The worst-kept secret’s out: We’re high right now," CMC's LinkedIn page says. "Join us as we turn what was once a freak flag into a badge of honor. Get the lowdown about the world’s most misunderstood plant and support our mission to destigmatize it for all adults at www.imhighrightnow.com." But maybe it's cooler to keep it a little mysterious and private whether or not someone is high? 

Also see: "Weed's Come a Long Way, Baby" Campaign to Premiere on 4/20