Taking the High Road: Creating Injury-Prevention Awareness for Cannabis Users

Speaker: Kelley Teahen, Vice President, Communications and Marketing, Parachute

Leading up to cannabis legalization in Canada in 2018, there was a concerted public relations effort to show the relative harmlessness of cannabis. As an injury prevention charity, however, Parachute could see from the evidence the harms that increased with more-open cannabis use: unintentional childhood exposure in the home; and increase in impairment-caused injury on our roads. We received funding from our federal government to address these two issues in national public relations campaigns: But how to reach cannabis users who are dismissive of any kind of fear-mongering about their now-legal recreational drug of choice? Parachute VP Kelley Teahen will walk you through the research, campaign development and execution of campaigns "Know What Impaired Means and "High and Locked", where we used humour and a peer-to-peer approach to reach our audiences. The presentation will use participant polls and chat Q&A to engage with the campaign process and creative asset review.