Report: Facebook Looking To Ease Cannabis Advertising Rules

Legal cannabis vendors frustrated with Facebook, Inc. FB's restrictive promotional rules may find the latest report from The Telegraph encouraging.

What Happened

Facebook is reportedly looking at changing rules on "regulated goods," which would give cannabis sellers the ability to advertise their products to social media users.

As it stands today, Facebook's policies do not allow the sale of marijuana but internal documents stated the social media company is looking to consider if it can "loosen this restriction." The internal document added it's looking to make changes to its rules that would impact medical marijuana, legal marijuana and brick-and-mortar stores.

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Why It's Important

The Telegraph publication quoted a Facebook employee who said making changes to its rules could prove to be "operationally challenging." Cannabis has different legal classifications across the world so it could see pushback in "areas of the world where the law or [society] views marijuana negatively,"

Nevertheless, if Facebook proceeds with changes it will would represent a "remarkable turnaround on cannabis for" the social media company. After all, Facebook is known for punishing cannabis-related accounts with bans or blocked searches, according to Marijuana Moment.

Facebook's platform may in the future allow cannabis companies to advertise prices on the site but the social media platform is unlikely to be used for cannabis sales, even in the Marketplace section.