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Colorado Tries To Educate On Pot Laws

CDPHE

There's a new campaign from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.  Ali Maffey is the Retail Marijuana Education Program Manager, and she says an awareness campaign is needed for Coloradans and visitors.

"Through our legislative mandate, we received funding from the marijuana sales tax dollars," says Maffey, "to educate all of Coloradans and the visitors about what the laws are in Colorado, and what potential health effects to look for. 

"We have seen quite a bit of confusion.  We were able to do a state-wide survey about 1500 Coloradans asking about what retail marijuana laws they knew about.  We have some preliminary data back, but the numbers show we have a lot of room to grow in educating Coloradans on what those retail marijuana laws are."

A much smaller study found only 1 in 4 people correctly knew the laws for recreation marijuana use.  That number could understandably be even lower for tourist in the state. 

"We've had centuries, and particularly decades, to get used to changes in alcohol laws, changes in tobacco laws, age limits, where you can smoke publicly and where you can't," says Maffey.  "Those things have changed over time and there have been educational campaigns related to those.  People feel like that have a general culture and understanding about what it means to use those substances, but marijuana really is so new that this initial effort is really just focused on the residents, but through that effort we're going to have a lot of information that then becomes available point-of-sale for residents and particularly visitors."

Right now the “Good To Know” campaign is only on the airwaves and newspapers, but they plan to expand to information in schools, and working with retail marijuana stores to inform anyone who visits.

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