Abstract
BackgroundYouth exposure to positive marijuana messages increases their risk of marijuana use. Since Washington State legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, marijuana businesses have used social media business pages to promote their products. Regulations to prevent youth access and targeting by marijuana businesses on social media in Washington State are absent. The purpose of this study was to engage youth in conceptualizing prevention approaches to limit youth exposure to marijuana business promotions on social media.MethodsTowards our goal of generating novel prevention approaches and promoting youth interaction to build ideas, we used focus groups. Adolescents ages 15-20 years in Washington State were recruited through purposeful sampling to achieve a diverse sample from six schools across two counties. During focus groups, trained facilitators used a semi-structured guide to prompt discussion about marijuana business presence on social media. In the latter half of focus groups, facilitators showed example social media posts from marijuana businesses. All focus groups were audio recorded and manually transcribed. Qualitative analysis was conducted using the constant comparative method.ResultsA total of 32 adolescents with average age 17 years (SD = 0.6), 71% female, 43.8% Asian and 21.9% mixed race, participated in 5 focus groups. Recommendations for prevention focused in two main thematic areas. First, participants supported policies to restrict underage access to marijuana social media pages, an example quote was: “you have access to [the social media page] without being 21 and I think that’s a problem.” Second, participants proposed regulation of content that marijuana companies can post on social media, an example quote was: “I’m thinking they shouldn’t be allowed to use children or anything associated with children and the memes that they post.”ConclusionsOur findings indicate two strategies to limit youth exposure to marijuana content on social media. These specific strategies represent potential avenues to revise state policies and test the effectiveness of these approaches for states that permit recreational marijuana.
Highlights
Youth exposure to positive marijuana messages increases their risk of marijuana use
This study focused on youth voices and perspectives; which is best suited to a qualitative research design [8]
In order to provide a forum for adolescents to discuss and share opinions, interaction between youth was critical to the study design
Summary
Youth exposure to positive marijuana messages increases their risk of marijuana use. Since Washington State legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, marijuana businesses have used social media business pages to promote their products. Regulations to prevent youth access and targeting by marijuana businesses on social media in Washington State are absent. The purpose of this study was to engage youth in conceptualizing prevention approaches to limit youth exposure to marijuana business promotions on social media. The emerging landscape surrounding legalized recreational marijuana use presents an optimal moment to consider youth marijuana prevention. In November of 2012, Washington State passed Initiative Measure No 502 (I-502), which legalized recreational marijuana use for persons over the age of 21. One challenge is that youth are presented with increased opportunities for exposure to marijuana messages, including advertisements and promotions. As adolescents remain the most ubiquitous and engaged social media users [1], the commercial marijuana business presence in the social media space has high potential to reach and influence youth.
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