The Path to Legalized Marijuana in Nebraska
Before moving to Nebraska (and becoming parents), my wife and I had a pretty incredible 4-step system for Friday nights:
- Order weed delivery
- Wait 30 minutes
- Order pizza delivery
- Retrieve both deliveries in one fell swoop, timed to perfection
Life was easy living in Seattle. But that was then.
Now, we live in Lincoln, Nebraska, where marijuana is fully illegal…even for medicinal purposes.
As a marketing strategist, it’s my job to be curious and notice trends. And my curiosity has certainly peaked as it relates to marijuana. Our neighbors in Colorado have fully legalized marijuana, and in the last six years have collected over $1.6 billion — that’s just at the state level- in marijuana taxes and fee revenues…but just a hop and a skip East and you’re faced with criminal charges?
In my opinion, changing these laws requires two things: changing the narrative, and changing the brand.
The Doctor That Changed My Beliefs
We were all taught the same things in school: Marijuana is a drug, and drugs are bad. Therefore, people who smoke marijuana are also bad.
I carried this belief with me much longer than the rest of my friends. In my mind, marijuana was a path towards prison sentences and disappointed parents. Even though I dabbled a bit throughout the years, I carried a hefty load of cognitive dissonance with me every time I smoked. It wasn’t until I was 26 that my entire belief system on marijuana was flipped on its head.
At a small gathering with my wife’s coworkers, I picked up a conversation between two of the other husbands. Husband 1 was inquiring if Husband 2 was going to grab a glass of wine. Husband 2 was in his 50s, and was one of the top anesthesiologists in Washington. Here’s a summary of his response:
“I rarely drink. Especially this late into the evening. As an anesthesiologist, I need to make sure I’m 100% ready for surgery in the morning. One glass of wine could affect my performance. Instead of drinking wine to unwind like most people, I end my evenings with some hits of weed from my pipe. Smoking cannabis at night doesn’t leave me with hangovers or headaches the next morning, so I’m still able to do my job well”.
This grown man…this anesthesiologist…this gentleman that owns a beautiful home in a beautiful private neighborhood…smokes weed? Isn’t marijuana a drug? Aren’t drugs bad? Wouldn’t that make Husband 2…someone who’s devoted his life to saving other people’s lives…a bad person?
All of a sudden, I was learning of a new narrative.
The Need for a New Narrative
That night talking with the anesthesiologist has lingered with me for 6 years. It completely changed my outlook on what kinds of people make up much of the cannabis community. We aren’t the lazy, unmotivated slobs depicted in Hollywood movies and the high school counselor’s pamphlets. We’re real people. We’re doctors, lawyers, teachers, pastors, and athletes. We’re suburban stay-at-home moms that spend our days golfing; smoking the green on the green.
The issue is that this new narrative hasn’t reached states like Nebraska, yet. In Nebraska, marijuana is still viewed as the bad drug. How do we change their minds?
Brand strategist Jasmine Bina, talking about changing beliefs vs values:
“Short of a life-changing event, consumer values typically don’t budge. The beliefs that sit on top of those values, however, do change easily.”
She calls attention to the marijuana start-up, MedMen:
“Cannabis startup MedMen knew that changing peoples’ anti-drug values was a dead end, but changing the belief that sat on top of that value — the belief that drug users are bad people — could, in fact, be changed. MedMen’s new narrative gave people room to understand that you can be a drug user and still be a good person. And logic only dictates that if you want to use marijuana, you can still maintain your values and stay a good person, too.”
To see Nebraska’s beliefs on display, look at the comment sections of any local news story relating to marijuana. It’s obvious that the people with majority voting power here have been clinging on to an archaic belief system, making it difficult to progress alongside the other states. As a pro-legalization community, we need to learn to respect the individual’s values but help them understand that their underlying beliefs have been misguided.
Let’s Re-Brand Marijuana
In the world of consumerism, the term “brand” is best defined by Marty Neumeier:
“A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization”.
So, how can Nebraska ever hope to enjoy cannabis peacefully? Let’s re-brand marijuana. Let’s change the gut feelings.
To change the brand, understand that we need new stories and new symbolism. We need to change the way we talk about marijuana. If we change perception, we change the brand. Companies like Dosist are doing just that — marketing cannabis as a wellness product, not a drug. They’re marketing better sleep, positive emotions, relaxation, and pain relief.
Notice how there are no photos of marijuana leaves in their photos.
The marijuana leaf is “theirs”, now. It belongs to the other side. Pro-marijuana has lost the right to the image. It now symbolizes all of the things we are fighting to change. When Krystal Gabel was running for Governor of Nebraska, there were groups of people on busy intersections promoting her by flashing fluorescent green signs with marijuana leaves hand drawn onto them. Even for someone that is pro-legalization, these groups visually represented something my wife and I didn’t want to be a part of. They triggered the social response that’s been wired into our brains…and if felt this way, how can we hope for the anti-legalization community to open themselves up to our ideas? These groups can’t be the only people that lead the charge on legalization, or we’ll never win. This is the one area that I believe Medmen is getting wrong. They’re using a symbol that too many people have been hardwired to associate with “that’s a drug, and drugs are bad”.
Look at Colorado, California, or Washington state. Most cannabis shops don’t use photos of marijuana leaves in their windows. They use green crosses. We can own a green cross. We can control that narrative. After decades of anti-marijuana advertisements, we can no longer control the narrative of the leaf…no matter how many times you shout “It’s just a plant!”.
And no, it’s not just a plant. Not anymore. Look at vitamins. People aren’t buying billions of dollars worth of Vitamin C because “it’s just carbon, oxygen and hydrogen”. They’re buying the end benefit. Let’s take a page out of Dosist’s marketing strategy and start promoting the positive benefits of cannabis. That’s a fight we can win.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
