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We did it! Facebook is now running our marijuana reform advertisements.
Here’s what happened: Facebook banned our legalization ads for using marijuana imagery in 2010, citing its ban on ads for smoking products. It happened again this year, with Facebook claiming the ads violated their policy against promoting illegal drug use. The ACLU of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation spoke with Facebook on our behalf, and the social network backed down, approving them to run on the site.
Over 15,000 activists and countless thousands of Facebook users signed our petition, messaged Mark Zuckerberg and changed their cover and profile photos in just one week of protest, and Facebook heard you loud and clear. With your help, we’re now running our DontForgetMarijuana.com ads, recruiting Facebook users to make marijuana reform a 2012 campaign issue.
This is a pretty huge development that took years in the making. In 2010, Facebook rejected Just Say Now’s very first marijuana reform ads after they were seen over 38 million times across the site. We fought back, earning front-page coverage at the Huffington Post, BoingBoing and other publications – but Facebook wouldn’t give in, and it seriously impacted our abilities to identify supporters and use the platform to organize for change that year.
We thank Facebook for reaching this decision. While the approval of marijuana imagery in Facebook ads might not seem like a big deal, we can now make use of the largest social network on the Internet to have an open and honest conversation about reform.
We really couldn’t have done this without you, the ACLUNC and EFF, and look forward to fully using Facebook as an organizing tool to identify support and elevate the conversation around marijuana reform to the highest levels of national debate.
6 Comments
Here is my reply to Brian Sonenstein’s email about this.
Brian,
With all due respect all we have to do is; as a whole people not recognize their draconian drug laws and punishments i.e. Prison. All drugs are legal in my eyes no matter the law. We are adults and no one has the right to dictate what we choose to put in our sovereign bodies. Look at the crime, the murders, the ruination of lives by declaring them illegal. All, I repeat, all drugs should be legal. A little aside for you..the biggest dealer of drugs is connected to government and TPTB..Either by commission or omission. Wachovia laundered some 300 some billions in drug money. Let’s end this, as I have personally ended it by not giving recognition to their law. They did not ask me if it was okay to do this, just as they take our rights one by one away and never ask us. Did they ask you if the patriot act was okay..No, did they ask you if homeland security was okay, No, did they ask you if they could go to Iraq, Libya, and now Syria, No. Do you know the first act in LIbya after Qaddafi was murdered in cold blood? They formed a central bank. What does that tell you about the purpose of all these lies about democracy. I know you are focused on one thing but you won’t win until we dictate law, just law, not the psychopathic laws of control and punishment that have us all cowed. Now the president can murder american citizens, and any foreign nationals they choose to murder based on someones assumptions of their guilt to the point of a death sentence..did they ask you??..No. Well I just say no to them and am willing to die for that right, our freedom. My mentors are men and women of character and honor like me..Ghandi, Jesus(not in the christian sense), McKenna, and countless others who see the folly and cruelty of this oppressive culture. This probably will never get to you and no one will read it but this is my truth…non violent resistance to insanity. I leave you with this quote which is ancient but true.
“In the final analysis, dharma, righteousness, always wins,
never unrighteousness.
Truth is always victorious; untruth always fails in the end.
Patience, forbearance, always wins out, not anger.
One who is patient becomes established in the Absolute, in Brahman.”
- the Mahabharata
All the best to you
Burnie Metzen aka Bdog aka Max
or maddy as I am known here
I say the above not in anger which used to be my way, but with hope that I plant a seed. I can no longer afford the negative luxory of anger. The folly of thinking there is a left or a right answer to anything is gone. Now it is is all of us facing a system hellbent on our destruction as human beings and the only answer I have is to act like a human being in the finest sense of the word. Hate only contracts you, turns you into something ugly. Love expands infinitely spreading its beneficence to all it touches. I have been through trial by fire like a lot us and come out the other side. You have a choice..to let that trial destroy you with anger and hate or fill you up with its opposite. I choose the latter. This is may be OT but I personally don’t see it like that but do apologize to anyone I offend by posting it here. In this I fall down a lot, get angry, but I always rise again
Bdog Burnie Max
lol…you should be campaigning to shut facebook down or at the least warning people not to be part of it.
amazing what passes for progress here
Wondering why Jon Walker hadn’t checked in at all at the FDL Saturday Book Salon with the authors of Marijuana Legalization, I finally figured out he must have been busy again collecting his hyperbolic superlatives for the coming week.
Maddy: Yep, Wm Blake — “Damn braces, bless relaxes”.
This is a terrific development.
(I must say I cannot believe what passes for intelligent “commentary” here.)
Anyway, thank you Brian, for all of your hard work. Looking forward to the innovative organizing tools your effort will lay out on Facebook users.
You must be the god of reticence and wisdom who guards the gate of acceptable discourse. The one who passes judgement on others words to enter them as fit for use in the world or ban them forever from this heart who speaks his truth. Have a laugh mate, lighten it up.
“Whatsoever is brought upon you
take cheerfully and be patient;
For gold is tried in the fire,
and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity”