Colorado Spends $2 Million Putting Giant Rat Cages On the Street to Stop Kids From Smoking Pot

The Colorado governor’s office has launched a program which will spend $2 million putting human-sized rat cages on the streets of Denver to convince kids not to smoke pot.

The cages — complete with giant water bottles — are part of the “Don’t Be a Lab Rat” campaign, which aims to convince kids that since Colorado is a testing ground for legal marijuana, the kids who smoke it are just like lab rats.

“Volunteers needed,” reads a sign on one of the cages. “Must have a developing brain. Must smoke weed. Must not be concerned about schizophrenia.”

The campaign also launched a website with statistics aimed at convincing kids that smoking marijuana would be a disaster.

“Weed can drop a kid’s IQ from the average to the bottom 30 percent,” one page reads. “Are you OK with 70 percent of the the world being smarter than you?”

Advertiser Mike Sukle, who designed the campaign, said he thinks it will be really effective because it appeals to kids’ intelligence.

“We don’t say, ‘It’s absolute’; we say, ‘This study exists. Some people dispute that. Make up your own mind,’” Sukle said, according to an article in The Denver Post.

Most of the money for the campaign comes from the state attorney general’s office, from settlements with pharmaceutical companies.

The program began on Monday.