Feb 26, 2020
For the second consecutive year, a survey of Denver teenagers is showing Denver’s High Costs marijuana youth education and prevention campaign is effectively discouraging youth from consuming adult-use marijuana. Among youth that were aware of the campaign, 81 percent of teens between the ages of 13-17 indicated the campaign discouraged them from using marijuana, compared to 75 percent the previous year.
The High Costs campaign is an effort by the City and County of Denver, managed by the Department of Excise and Licenses’ Office of Marijuana Policy, to educate Denver’s youth on how underage marijuana use can affect their passions, pursuits and future. Instead of promoting scare tactics, Denver’s campaign focuses on providing facts for teens, so they can have accurate peer-to-peer conversations.
Among the results of the survey conducted by Insights Lab, which ran from mid-November through mid-December 2019, and polled 537 teens ages 13-18 representative of Denver’s youth population, were a few other key statistics of note:
“After Denver became the first major city in America with legalized retail marijuana, many other cities and states turned to us to learn how we successfully regulated marijuana. Hopefully, our continued success educating youth to wait until they are of legal age to consume can also serve as an example for other communities across the U.S. The verdict is in that scare tactics are not successful with youth. Providing them facts about marijuana is the most effective youth education and prevention approach.” said Denver Excise and Licenses Executive Director Ashley Kilroy, who has overseen marijuana regulation in Denver since the first day of legalized retail sales in 2014.
The campaign is delivered to Denver youth where they are at, such as social media platforms, posters in schools, digital radio, school bus signage, social media, mobile gaming apps, digital video and other platforms.
Find the campaign at TheHighCosts.com. For additional findings please visit www.thehighcosts.com/survey-results to access the full survey data.