Congressional Bill Aimed At Protecting Kids Online Could Cause Headaches For Marijuana Businesses

Few in the public policy space oppose the intent of the legislation, but some say its broad and potentially vague requirements could be difficult in practice.

Shoshana Weismann, a fellow at the free-market R Street Institute, said the measure could ultimately block wide swaths of online advertising that are accessible by minors—even if the ads don’t target children, as the bill’s proponent’s suggest.

“The problem is that the knowledge standard here is so loose,” she said in an email to Marijuana Moment, pointing to the bill’s definition of knowledge by platforms that they’re serving content to underage users.

It says that ‘‘know’’ or ‘‘knows’’ means to “have actual knowledge or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances.”

“That can be used to mean that platforms ‘should have known’ that a user was a minor,” Weismann said, “because they were, say, researching colleges, looking at SpongeBob memes, or by lots of other arbitrary possible criteria.”

An FAQ section on the factsheet from sponsor Blackburn’s office says that the bill would not impose age verification requirements or force users to provide their government IDs. But Weismann says platforms might ultimately decide that’s the only prudent way to shield themselves from liability under the proposal.

“Despite the authors’ claims, the only way to avoid liability here is to verify the ages of users,” she said. “Even then, there is no guarantee that minors won’t come into contact with the specified content…”

At the state level last year, Colorado’s Senate passed a bill similarly aimed at protecting minors from drug and other controversial content. But the proposal—which was later put on hold indefinitely by a House committee—drew fire from advocates such as Weismann at R Street Institute.

She and other critics pointed out at the time that the bill could ban content around over-the-counter cough syrup and even, potentially, the Colorado governor’s social media posts in favor of the state’s legal psychedelics industry.