Dave Ross’ PSA to keep kids away from marijuana in Washington

Since voters decided to legalize marijuana for adults in November, there’s been a debate about how to keep kids from getting their hands on it, or at least keep them from getting their hands on it more easily.

An article in The Seattle Times looks at some of the ideas aimed at making sure a younger generation of Washingtonians doesn’t end up as a mob of stunted burnouts like their parents. A chunk of the tax revenue from pot sales will in fact go toward education and prevention. There’s been talk of child-proof packaging, which seems rather cruel to somebody using it to treat their arthritis. There are also requests for restrictions on any marketing that might make pot appeal to kids.

But as one state consultant noted to the Times, nobody knows how to stop pot sellers from marketing to kids on social media. But that same consultant, Jonathan Caulkins of Carnegie Mellon, points out that there might be a way to get kids to ignore marijuana: if they see that their parents think it’s cool.

He points out that the leaders of the legal weed movement tend to be guys in their 60s looking as “uncool as any group you could think of.”

So what they need is a guy in his 60s to do anti-pot PSAs. Let’s see, who could that be?

Dave Ross’ marijuana PSA: Hey kids. This is your dad. You may think you’re pretty hip cats toking on the Mary Jane. Just remember it was us, your parents, who paved the way for the freedom you now enjoy, hookah boy. We were one toke over the line before you were even a hallucination in our THC-glazed eyes. We were rollin’ doobies and getting totally baked, playing Beatles records backwards. You have no idea how far out we were. In fact, the reason that some of you even exist is we were so far out we forgot to use protection, and so well, here you are.

Listen to Dave reading his PSA on-air