Despite Legalization, Anti-Cannabis Marketing Censorship Still In Full Effect

Despite marijuana legalization sweeping the nation, it seems anti-cannabis marketing remains in full effect. While more than half the states in the U.S. now allow medical cannabis, and a growing number of states are adopting full legalization, many companies fearful of a federal government crackdown, are censoring what we can share online about cannabis.  

It seems Twitter has started censoring searches for “marijuana” and “cannabis.” Searches for things like “opioids” are showing up just fine, the Joint Blog reports.

“Without warning, Twitter recently instituted a ‘sensitive content’ filter that is automatically turned on for all users, and the settings to disable it are hidden”, states a Change.org petition, started by Marijuana Majority. “As a result, queries for topics that Twitter has designated “sensitive” yield zero results on the search tab for latest tweets.”

“Censoring marijuana-related searches prevents serious people from communicating about one of the most prominent policy issues of our time,” the petition, which is addressed to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stated. You can read more info on the petition by clicking here.

Coincidentally, here at Social Media Unicorn we also experienced an issue with censorship while attempting to send an email newsletter to some of our clients via MailChimp.

We sent the below query to the MailChimp staff after one of our messages was flagged for violation of the “acceptable use” policy.

“I appreciate that you do not allow pharmaceutical sales or the sales of illegal substances, but we are a licensed cannabis extraction product sending our weekly menu to inventory control managers at licensed cannabis dispensaries in the state of Nevada. Since medical marijuana is currently legal in 32 states and the District of Columbia, we’d be pretty surprised if you consider medical marijuana products to be illegal.”

Well we were very surprised to receive the below response, stating legal cannabis menus were somehow a violation. 

A real world example of anti-cannabis marketing.