Politics
Senate Advances Youth Safety Bill That Could Complicate Marijuana Businesses’ Online Outreach
A Senate committee has advanced a bill aimed at protecting children online that could create complications for advertisers trying to promote legal marijuana and other regulated substances.
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee advanced the bill, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) from Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), in a voice vote on Wednesday,
The full House of Representatives passed a similar youth online safety measure with cannabis-focused provisions last month.
Under the Senate legislation, which has 76 cosponsors, online platforms would be prohibited from facilitating the “advertising of narcotic drugs, cannabis products, tobacco products, gambling, or alcohol to an individual that the covered platform knows is a minor.”
It would also require online platforms to “exercise reasonable care in the creation and implementation of any design feature to prevent and mitigate” the “distribution, sale, or use of narcotic drugs, tobacco products, cannabis products, gambling, or alcohol” to minors. That provision is in effect when a “reasonable and prudent person would agree that such harms were reasonably foreseeable by the covered platform and would agree that the design feature is a contributing factor to such harms.”
Video streaming services would specifically be required to “employ measures that safeguard against serving advertising for narcotic drugs, cannabis products, tobacco products, gambling, or alcohol directly to the account or profile of an individual that the service knows is a minor.”
A covered platform under the bill as approved by the Senate committee would be defined as an “online platform, online video game, messaging application, or video streaming service that connects to the internet and that is used, or is reasonably likely to be used, by a minor.”
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Few in the public policy space oppose the overall drug-focused intent of the legislation, but some say its broad and potentially vague requirements could be difficult in practice.
Shoshana Weismann, a fellow at the free-market R Street Institute, told Marijuana Moment last year when the Senate version was filed that the measure could ultimately block wide swaths of online advertising that are accessible by minors—even if the ads don’t target children, as the bill’s proponent’s suggest.
“The problem is that the knowledge standard here is so loose,” she said, pointing to the bill’s definition of knowledge by platforms that they’re serving content to underage users.
After the Senate passed an earlier version of KOSA in 2024, Jenna Leventoff, ACLU’s senior policy council and director of the civil right’s group’s national political advocacy division, said she was skeptical the legislation would pass constitutional muster.
A number of states have attempted to adopt similar bills, Leventoff pointed out, and “in almost every case, a court has evaluated those laws and determined that they are likely to be unconstitutional.”
“It’s extremely likely that KOSA is unconstitutional,” she said at the time,” and it makes me wonder why Congress is trying to enact something that won’t hold up in a court of law.”
At the state level in 2024, Colorado’s Senate passed a bill similarly aimed at protecting minors from drug and other controversial content. But the proposal—which was later put on hold indefinitely by a House committee—drew fire from advocates such as Weismann at R Street Institute.
She and other critics pointed out at the time 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.
