US House Approves Child Online Safety Bill With Provisions Touching Cannabis Ads

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 267-117 on Monday to pass the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, sponsored by Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), a measure meant to protect minors online that could also affect how legal marijuana businesses advertise. The bill, H.R. 7757, had previously cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee and one of its subcommittees. A Senate companion version has not yet received a floor vote. As passed, the legislation bars online platforms from facilitating ads for "narcotic drugs, cannabis products, tobacco products, gambling, or alcohol" to any user a platform knows is a minor. It also lists "distribution, sale, or use" of those same substances as risks platforms must actively shield young users from. A provision in earlier drafts requiring video streaming services to prevent such ads from reaching accounts known to belong to minors appears to have been dropped from this version, for reasons that remain unclear. Covered platforms are those publicly accessible, allowing searchable, followable usernames, enabling sharing of user-generated content, designed to boost engagement, and using personal data to target ads. "Congress has spent years searching for how to best protect children and teens online, and today's overwhelming bipartisan vote indicates that we have found our solution," Guthrie said in a joint statement with Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), the committee's ranking member. "The KIDS Act creates strong protections with new rules for design features, default settings, and kids' privacy." Some analysts back the bill's goals but call its language too broad. Shoshana Weismann, a fellow at the R Street Institute, said when the Senate version was introduced last year that "the problem is that the knowledge standard here is so loose," warning it could sweep in ads merely accessible to minors rather than ones targeting them. ACLU senior policy counsel Jenna Leventoff has separately questioned whether the measure, formerly called the Kids Online Safety Act, would survive constitutional scrutiny, noting courts have struck down similar state laws. A comparable Colorado bill passed that state's Senate in 2024 but was shelved by a House committee after critics warned it could restrict content such as cough-syrup ads or the governor's posts promoting the state's psychedelics program. Multiple studies show youth marijuana use has generally held steady or declined in states that legalized cannabis. A federal Monitoring the Future survey presented in January found teen use stable, with more students reporting difficulty accessing cannabis. Research from Canada and Germany found no youth-use increase after legalization. Federal data released in July showed past-year use climbing among adults 26 and older while remaining stable among adolescents and young adults from 2021 to 2024. A Marijuana Policy Project analysis found youth use fell in 19 of 21 legal states, averaging a 35 percent decline in the earliest-legalizing states, while CDC data showed a decade-long drop in high-school students' past-month marijuana use.