Thu 24 June 2021:
A global ban on cannabis advertising is vital to protect public health interests following the rapid rise in the potency of cannabis products and a drop in the perceived risk of the narcotic drug, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said on Thursday.
“A comprehensive ban on advertising, promoting and sponsoring cannabis would ensure that public health interests prevail over business interests. Such a ban would need to apply across all jurisdictions,” the UNODC said in the World Drug Report 2021.
The call for a blanket ban on the advertising of cannabis is a response to the almost fourfold increase in the potency of cannabis products in some regions of the world, Ghada Waly, the UNODC’s executive director, said.
“There is often a substantial disconnect between real risks and public perception. In some parts of the world for example, cannabis products have almost quadrupled in potency, and yet the percentage of adolescents who perceive cannabis as harmful has dropped by as much as 40 per cent,” Waly said in her introduction to the report.
As many as 200 million people used cannabis at some point during 2019, including 14.5% of people in North America, according to UNODC data.
The number of global users of the narcotic drug has risen by roughly 18% over the past decade.
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