Senate-Passed Social Media Bill Could Muzzle Drug Policy Advocacy And Put Privacy At Risk, ACLU Says

Earlier this year, Colorado’s state Senate passed a bill similarly aimed at protecting minors from drug and other controversial content. The proposal—which has since been put on hold indefinitely by a House committee—drew fire from Shoshana Weismann, a fellow at the free-market R Street Institute. She and other critics pointed out that the bill could ban content around over-the-counter cough syrup and even, potentially, the Colorado governor’s social media posts in favor of the state’s legal psychedelics industry.

As for the federal Kids Online Safety Act, Weismann said she wasn’t sure how much the bill would impact content around substances like marijuana or psychedelics given that they’re not included in the relevant section of federal code defining narcotic drugs, but she said that the legislation in its current form “incentivizes platforms to suppress all kinds of content that could cause mental health disorders or substance use disorders, which is why both pro-life and pro-choice groups oppose it.”

“Even news content about wars or climate change could cause minors anxiety and platforms would be at fault,” she wrote in an email to Marijuana Moment. “It’s not hard to guess what this means for marijuana: platforms are likely to censor even research about the substance in order to avoid liability. Some platforms will censor this content for all users—not just minors—in order to further avoid liability here, as segmenting adults and minors is not an easy task.”