Congressional Lawmakers Approve Youth Safety Bill That Could Complicate Marijuana Businesses’ Online Outreach

A congressional committee has approved a bill aimed at protecting children
online that could create complications for advertisers trying to promote
legal marijuana and other regulated substances.

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week passed the
Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, sponsored by Rep. Brett
Guthrie (R-KY), the chair of the panel, in a 28-24 vote.

This comes about three months after a similar proposal from Rep. Gus
Bilirakis (R-FL) advanced through a subcommittee, while a Senate companion
version awaits action.

Under the latest legislation, online platforms would be prohibited from
facilitating the “advertising of narcotic drugs, cannabis products, tobacco
products, gambling, or alcohol to an individual that the covered platform
knows is a minor.”

The provision around drug use lists the “distribution, sale, or use of
narcotic drugs, tobacco products, cannabis products, gambling, or alcohol”
as risks that platforms would need to actively guard minors against.

One section that was in prior iterations of the bill that seems to have
been omitted from this latest version had stipulated that video streaming
platforms would be required “to employ measures that safeguard against
serving advertising for narcotic drugs, cannabis products, tobacco
products, gambling, or alcohol directly to the account or profile of an
individual that the service knows is a minor.”

It’s unclear why that language was left out of the latest measure, H.R. 7757
.

Online platforms covered under the legislation include those that are
publicly available for use, allow the creation of searchable usernames that
can be followed, facilitate the “sharing and access to user-generated
content,” is designed to promote engagement and uses user information to
target advertising.

Guthrie said in a press release that the measure’s passage represents one
of the “meaningful steps forward to empower parents and protect children
and teens online” the the panel has taken.

“We owe it to parents. We owe it to communities. And most importantly, we
owe it to the kids who are counting on us to get this right,” he said.

Bilirakis said the bill is “designed to strengthen safeguards and increase
transparency in the online space.”

“I remain steadfast in my commitment to ensuring that children can safely
navigate the digital world, while holding technology companies accountable
for the platforms they operate,” he said. “Protecting our kids must always
come before protecting corporate profits.”

Few in the public policy space oppose the overall 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, told
Marijuana Moment last year when the Senate version was filed that 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,
pointing to the bill’s definition of knowledge by platforms that they’re
serving content to underage users.

After last year’s Senate passage of the earlier measure—titled the “Kids
Online Safety Act” (KOSA)—Jenna Leventoff, ACLU’s senior policy council and
director of the civil right’s group’s national political advocacy division,
said she was skeptical the legislation would pass constitutional muster.

A number of states have attempted to adopt similar bills, Leventoff pointed
out, and “in almost every case, a court has evaluated those laws and
determined that they are likely to be unconstitutional.”

“It’s extremely likely that KOSA is unconstitutional,” she said at the
time,” and it makes me wonder why Congress is trying to enact something
that won’t hold up in a court of law.”

At the state level in 2024, 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.

Under existing regulations, states that have legalized have generally seen
less cannabis consumption among young people compared to states where
marijuana remains illegal, according to multiple studies.

During a webinar in January, federal officials discussed the results of the
latest Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey—which is supported by the
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and conducted every year for
decades by the University of Michigan.

Youth marijuana use is stable amid the state legalization movement, despite
prohibitionist claims to the contrary, they said. And beyond that, more
students are actually saying it’s harder to access cannabis and that they
disapprove of occasional use.


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To reform advocates, the results of the survey reinforce the idea that
creating a regulatory framework for cannabis where licensed retailers must
check IDs and implement other security mechanisms to prevent unlawful
diversion is a far more effective policy than prohibition, with illicit
suppliers whose products may be untested and where age-gating isn’t a
strictly enforced regulation.

To that point, a separate federally funded study out of Canada that was
released last year found that that youth marijuana use rates actually
declined after the country legalized cannabis.

The study was released about three months after German officials released a
separate report on their country’s experience with legalizing marijuana
nationwide.

Back in July, federal health data also indicated that while past-year
marijuana use in the U.S. overall has climbed in recent years, the rise has
been “driven by increases…among adults 26 years or older.” As for younger
Americans, rates of both past-year use and cannabis use disorder, by
contrast, “remained stable among adolescents and young adults between 2021
and 2024.”

Across the U.S., research suggests that marijuana use by young people has
generally fallen in states that legalize the drug for adults.

A report from the advocacy group Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), for
example, found that youth marijuana use declined in 19 out of 21 states
that legalized adult-use marijuana—with teen cannabis consumption down an
average of 35 percent in the earliest states to legalize. The report cited
data from a series of national and state-level youth surveys, including the
annual MTF survey.

Another survey from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) last year also showed a decline in the proportion of high-school
students reporting past-month marijuana use over the past decade, as dozens
of states moved to legalize cannabis.

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Complicate Marijuana Businesses’ Online Outreach appeared first on Marijuana
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