The maker of a popular marijuana vaping device posted a video to social media this week targeting Instagram and its parent company, Meta, for what it describes as an overly aggressive campaign to flag and remove cannabis-related content.
Puffco’s new video asserts that Instagram’s policing of cannabis posts by brands and individuals effectively stifles efforts at community building among veterans, medical marijuana patients and legal adult-use consumers.
“The world didn’t want us, so we made a safe space for our community on Instagram where we could just be ourselves and share what we love,” the video asserts. “Isn’t that the point of this place?”
The scene takes place in a house and includes, among others, a military veteran, a cancer patient and a recreational user. Someone begins to mention a sale on Puffco products, which triggers the appearance of a surveillance robot that ultimately marks the community for destruction.
Before the robot rules against the group, one character defends John, the veteran, who the video says “uses the plant to stay regulated,” and Sharon, who’s described as having stage-four melanoma and using marijuana “to relieve pain, to get her appetite back and simply relieve the stress of dealing with cancer.”
“We just want to exist without being shut down,” the group’s defender says, “for legal policies to support and reflect our legal rights to use products and materials that give us a moment of relief in a world of rising horrors.”
The new video is the latest outcry against social media companies that have regularly flagged marijuana-related content as violations of their terms of service. The practice has led to suspensions of accounts belonging to state-regulated cannabis brands, informational websites and individual content creators, who now often create backup accounts to avoid the loss of a key line of communication to thousands of followers.
Puffco’s Instagram post is, of course, simultaneously a call to action and an advertisement for its new Black Friday sale ahead of the holidays, which the company quipped that it’d rather be talking about.
“However, we can’t do that without risking being shut down,” the post contends. “Instead, we made a video designed to be shared with ANYONE you may know who is connected to IG or META to give them context.”
The goal is to spread awareness of the issue, encourage updated policies and “stop the selective targeting of plant related content,” Puffco said.
Comments on the post are largely supportive, with some users pointing out that they’ve seen other potentially objectionable content on Instagram even as the company continues to target cannabis.
“Crazy how this platform sells sex yet blocks medicine,” one user replied. Another pointed out they “just saw an overtly racist reel supporting literal hate, and I bet IG will just let that live.”
Meta and its platforms Facebook and Instagram have long had a rocky relationship with the cannabis community over account suspensions and deletions. In 2018, concerns arose that Facebook was “shadowbanning” marijuana pages, including those of state cannabis regulatory agencies, by blocking them from search results
An internal presentation at the company the next year noted that it was considering loosening cannabis restrictions, but accounts have continued to run into problems.
In July 2023, Meta announced that it had updated its cannabis advertising policy to permit the promotion of some non-ingestible CBD products and also loosen restrictions on hemp ads. It said businesses could begin promoting the sale of CBD if they receive written approval from Meta and if the products are certified with the payment compliance company Legitscript and comply with local laws. Ads also could not target people under 18.
“We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services on our technologies,” Meta said. However, it added that “advertisers will continue to be prohibited from running ads that promote THC products or cannabis products containing related psychoactive components.”
Earlier last year, Meta faced criticism over a feature of its microblogging app, Threads, for prompting users with a “get help” message about federal substance misuse resources if they search “marijuana,” various psychedelics and other controlled substances. Meanwhile, alcohol- and tobacco-related searches were exempt from the prompt.
Twitter, now known as X, had a similar practice in place in 2020, cautioning users about “marijuana” searches as part of a partnership with SAMHSA. Alcohol and tobacco were excluded from the search restriction. But in late 2022, after being acquired by Elon Musk, Twitter suspended that practice.
Also, Twitter since updated its cannabis advertising policy, aiming to give cannabis businesses that are “certified advertisers” the ability to feature “packaged” cannabis products in the ad creative that’s promoted on the social media site.
Google, for its part, updated its policy in January 2023, making it so companies can promote Food and Drug Administration- (FDA) approved drugs containing CBD, as well as topical CBD products with no more than 0.3 percent THC.
Video game streaming company Twitch, meanwhile, updated its branding policy for streamers, prohibiting promotions of marijuana businesses and products while explicitly allowing alcohol partnerships.
Interestingly, Twitch had previously clarified rules in a way that was inclusive of cannabis—exempting marijuana-related references from the list of banned usernames, just as it does for alcohol and tobacco.
In an update to Apple’s iPhone software that was instituted in 2022, users were given an option to track medications and learn about possible drug interactions with other substances—including marijuana.
In 2021, Apple ended its policy of restricting cannabis companies from conducting business on its App store. The marijuana delivery service Eaze subsequently announced that consumers were able to shop and pay for products on its iPhone app for the first time.
In contrast to Apple, Google’s Android app hub updated its policy in 2019 to explicitly prohibit programs that connect users with cannabis, no matter whether it is legal in the jurisdiction where the user lives.
In 2022, New York marijuana regulators asked the social media app TikTok to end its ban on advertising that involves the word “cannabis” as they worked to promote public education on the state’s move to legalize.