BULLETIN-TAB

MBTA rejects marijuana school ads

Patrick Ronan/The Patriot Ledger

A Natick cannabis school that has been denied advertising space on MBTA trains is asking the state’s transit agency to get off its high horse.

Cara Crabb-Burnham, administrator of the Northeastern Institute of Cannabis, a company that prepares students for careers in the medical marijuana industry, said the T is engaging in viewpoint discrimination by refusing to run the institute’s advertisements.

“There’s no good reason for us to not be able to advertise with them,” Crabb-Burnham said Wednesday.

Joe Pesaturo, a spokesman for the T, said the ad campaign was rejected because it didn’t comply with the T’s ad guidelines, specifically its ban on ads that promote or encourage unlawful conduct or unlawful goods or services. Pesaturo said Titan 360, the firm that sells ads for the T, informed the institute Wednesday that its proposal had been rejected.

This isn’t the first time the T has denied ads related to marijuana. In 2000, the T denied three ads from the nonprofit group Change the Climate that questioned the stiffness of marijuana laws at the time. The group sued the T, and in 2004 a federal appeals court ruled that the T, a quasi-government agency, violated the group’s free-speech rights by turning down ads based on its viewpoint.

Crabb-Burnham said her company paid Titan $3,375 last month to run its campaign on the T, including on Red Line trains that stop in Quincy and Braintree. The ad campaign, called “We Teach. You Grow,” showed a cannabis seedling sprouting and featured a statistic about the booming marijuana industry. Last month, Crabb-Burnham said Titan told the institute the ads had been accepted and would be up for four weeks starting the week of April 20.

“They shouldn’t keep other people from running successful businesses,” Crabb-Burnham said. “They’re running a deficit. They’re really not in the position to be denying money from an educational facility.”

The T’s latest budget proposal for fiscal year 2016, which starts on July 1, reported a $187 million structural deficit.

“Ads require MBTA approval (not Titan’s),” Pesaturo wrote in an email Wednesday.

Crabb-Burnham said the institute received a full refund after the T took the campaign under review before any ads went up.

The T’s ad guidelines, adopted in 2012, prohibits 15 different types of ads on its property, including those depicting or promoting tobacco, alcohol, firearms, unlawful goods, nudity, unlawful conduct and political campaigns.

Crabb-Burnham said her school doesn’t sell, grow or store marijuana, and its only function is educational in nature. The school offers 12 courses that train people for various jobs in the marijuana industry.

Medical marijuana for qualifying patients became legal in Massachusetts in 2013. No marijuana dispensaries have opened yet, but the state has given preliminary approval to 11 sites.

Medical marijuana is still illegal according to the federal government.

Crabb-Burnham criticized the T, saying it’s illogical that a cash-strapped agency which has come under fire after a dismal winter full of service disruptions and equipment breakdowns would turn down ad revenue.

“They shouldn’t keep other people from running successful businesses,” Crabb-Burnham said. “They’re running a deficit. They’re really not in the position to be denying money from an educational facility.”

The T’s latest budget proposal for fiscal year 2016, which starts on July 1, reported a $187 million structural deficit.