Congressional Lawmakers Approve Youth Safety Bill That Could Complicate Marijuana Businesses’ Online Outreach

A congressional committee has approved a bill aimed at protecting children online that could create complications for advertisers trying to promote legal marijuana and other regulated substances.

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week passed the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, sponsored by Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), the chair of the panel, in a 28-24 vote.

This comes about three months after a similar proposal from Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) advanced through a subcommittee, while a Senate companion version awaits  action.

Under the latest legislation, 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.”

The provision around drug use lists the “distribution, sale, or use of narcotic drugs, tobacco products, cannabis products, gambling, or alcohol” as risks that platforms would need to actively guard minors against.

One section that was in prior iterations of the bill that seems to have been omitted from this latest version had stipulated that video streaming platforms would 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.”

It’s unclear why that language was left out of the latest measure, H.R. 7757.

Online platforms covered under the legislation include those that are publicly available for use, allow the creation of searchable usernames that can be followed, facilitate the “sharing and access to user-generated content,” is designed to promote engagement and uses user information to target advertising.

Guthrie said in a press release that the measure’s passage represents one of the “meaningful steps forward to empower parents and protect children and teens online” the the panel has taken.

“We owe it to parents. We owe it to communities. And most importantly, we owe it to the kids who are counting on us to get this right,” he said.

Bilirakis said the bill is “designed to strengthen safeguards and increase transparency in the online space.”

“I remain steadfast in my commitment to ensuring that children can safely navigate the digital world, while holding technology companies accountable for the platforms they operate,” he said. “Protecting our kids must always come before protecting corporate profits.”

Few in the public policy space oppose the overall 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 last year’s Senate passage of the earlier measure—titled the “Kids Online Safety Act” (KOSA)—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.

Under existing regulations, states that have legalized have generally seen less cannabis consumption among young people compared to states where marijuana remains illegal, according to multiple studies.

During a webinar in January, federal officials discussed the results of the latest Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey—which is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and conducted every year for decades by the University of Michigan.

Youth marijuana use is stable amid the state legalization movement, despite prohibitionist claims to the contrary, they said. And beyond that, more students are actually saying it’s harder to access cannabis and that they disapprove of occasional use.

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To reform advocates, the results of the survey reinforce the idea that creating a regulatory framework for cannabis where licensed retailers must check IDs and implement other security mechanisms to prevent unlawful diversion is a far more effective policy than prohibition, with illicit suppliers whose products may be untested and where age-gating isn’t a strictly enforced regulation.

To that point, a separate federally funded study out of Canada that was released last year found that that youth marijuana use rates actually declined after the country legalized cannabis.

The study was released about three months after German officials released a separate report on their country’s experience with legalizing marijuana nationwide.

Back in July, federal health data also indicated that while past-year marijuana use in the U.S. overall has climbed in recent years, the rise has been “driven by increases…among adults 26 years or older.” As for younger Americans, rates of both past-year use and cannabis use disorder, by contrast, “remained stable among adolescents and young adults between 2021 and 2024.”

Across the U.S., research suggests that marijuana use by young people has generally fallen in states that legalize the drug for adults.

A report from the advocacy group Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), for example, found that youth marijuana use declined in 19 out of 21 states that legalized adult-use marijuana—with teen cannabis consumption down an average of 35 percent in the earliest states to legalize. The report cited data from a series of national and state-level youth surveys, including the annual MTF survey.

Another survey from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last year also showed a decline in the proportion of high-school students reporting past-month marijuana use over the past decade, as dozens of states moved to legalize cannabis.