Big dope: how marijuana benefited from one of the slickest PR campaigns in history

And the medical marijuana PR campaign has its ‘torches of freedom’ moment, too. I have tracked it down to pages 18 and 19 of the February 6, 1979 issue of the Emory Wheel, the newspaper of Atlanta’s Emory University. Keith Stroup, the veteran founder and mainstay of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said he and his campaign were ‘trying to get marijuana reclassified medically’ and that they would ‘be using the issue as a red herring to give marijuana a good name’. It must be the single most successful rebranding in marketing history. Millions now associate a highly dangerous drug with miracle cures, health and wellbeing. Mr Stroup, understandably, has since denied the words, but the article is still sitting in the Emory library for anyone who wants to check.