PERRY: Colorado’s weird reefer madness education campaign is a high crime

Oh those state marijuana education folks are such cards — Hallmark cards. Lame ones.

Still smoldering from their scorching hot anti-teen-marijuana campaign from last year, the state health department, charged with teaching all of Colorado about the dos and don’ts of getting stoned, have unleashed yet another crack campaign. These are the pot-tax funded people who develop and implement a state-mandated strategy insisting that if we’re going to legalize marijuana, we’re going to campaign to keep people from choosing to use it. It’s a state government thing. After seeing their work for two years, a few issues have become clear: These masters of marketing have never smoked pot, or they haven’t smoked enough, or they smoke way too much, they aren’t from here, they aren’t from anywhere, they rarely, possibly never get out among other people, and none of these folks were actual teenagers themselves. Other than that, they seem as qualified to run the state’s positive-pot campaign as they are to operate NASA.

Not being teenagers is the only thing that can explain the marketing disaster from last year involving giant rat cages. If you’ve forgotten, it was these same state braniacs that launched the “Lab Rat” project across Colorado. It involved giant rat cages dragged around to Colorado high schools and skate parks that told teens not to become “lab rats.” The marketing collateral drew a parallel between lab rats and smoking pot as kids because scientists don’t know what will happen to kid brains when they get high. I can. It makes you stupid, but then, I’m not a highly paid state consultant, so what do I know?

The only ones who took the cages seriously were get-highs lining up to have their pictures Snap-Chatted from inside the cages with  joints, bongs and one-hitters in hand. I don’t know if the campaign actually made any teenager on the fence about trying dope actually hold off, but it made thousands of Colorado taxpayers wonder whether they should have gone into marketing for the State of Colorado, since, clearly, these people will buy anything.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE STATE MARIJUANA EDUCATION CAMPAIGN

Wonder no more, Colorado. These people will buy anything.

This year, Dr. Larry Wolk, the top doc for the state of Colorado, and his amazing team of pot-marketing experts, will spend almost $6 million of your hard-spent marijuana tax dollars on a campaign focused on helping us understand the rules of the taking the high road.

Wolk told Associated Press reporter Kristin Wyatt that the campaign is “bright and neighborly.”

If your great-aunt Lillian and Uncle Elmer were some of the hordes of people doing the yellow-diesel dance with the devil these days, this campaign might mean something. Think KOA radio’s Merrie Lynn of the 1960s giving advice about getting that pesky bong-water smell out of the carpet when Mittens knocks over the family hookah. Think Ramblers. Think ointments for dry, scaly skin. Think of greeting card puns and rhymes so pathetic even the buyers at the Dollar Tree would let them pass. This is what Colorado’s $6 million brain-stormers came up with:

“Public Space is Not the Place — It is Illegal to Use Marijuana in Public.”

Twitch. More?

“With Those Under 21, Be Aware, It’s Illegal to Give or Share.”

Urp.

“For Those Under 21, It’s Not Okay. Their Brains Are Still Growing. So Keep It Away.”

Shudder. Does that sound like $5.7 million to you? Me, neither.

How did I not know that there was so much money so easy for the taking? I can rhyme with the worst of them.

“Colorado Pot Is Wonderfully Hot, But Take It To Texas And In Jail You’ll Rot.” You’re welcome. Send my check made payable to “cash.” “Getting Stoned is Fun When You’re Old, But Smoke It As When You’re Young and Your Genitals Will Wither.”

OK, that doesn’t rhyme so well, but it will get some attention. What won’t get the attention of anyone is a campaign clearly written by the same team that gave America, “Since We’re Neighbors, Let’s Be Friends…” This state clunker has all the ingenuity and appeal of a mauve Snuggie. Allow me to play the straight man here and point out that Colorado’s kings of kush campaigns are not only stark naked, they’re weird and making us all uncomfortable. In the real world, this all means, “you’re fired,” but somehow that’s been confused with “you’re fired up.” It’s a state government thing.

There is one way to save this campaign, and that’s run this of kind kicker with the ads: “Go Ahead and Take a Toke, But You’ll Write Crap Like This if You Continue to Smoke. And if You Partake As a Colorado Kid, You’ll Work for the State, Like These Rhymers Did.

Reach Editor Dave Perry at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com