DENVER – As state officials launch an anti-pot campaign for youth that cautions adolescents against being a “lab rat,” some elected officials worry that the true experiment amounts to the dollars being spent.

The Use of Recreational Marijuana Tax Revenue Interim Study Committee met for the first time Tuesday, and certain members grilled the governor’s office on a new campaign launched this week that tells kids, “Don’t be a lab rat.” The $2 million campaign will use human-sized rat cages and television and movie-theater ads.

The campaign is the result of a partnership among the governor’s office, the city of Denver and the attorney general’s office. Grant money came from settlements with pharmaceutical companies, not from tax revenues.

But members of the committee pointed out that future campaigns could come from taxes and questioned whether such educational efforts are effective. The state already has allocated a separate $16.4 million in marijuana tax cash fund expenditures for education.

“It seems like a lot of the same reefer madness,” said Pueblo County Commissioner Sal Pace, a former House minority leader and former 3rd Congressional District candidate who sits on the interim committee. “It just seems a little reactionary and extreme from my perspective.”

Andrew Freedman, Gov. John Hickenlooper’s director of marijuana coordination, said the campaign is different from usual scare tactics because it draws a distinction between adult marijuana use and adolescent use.

“That’s the sort of conversation that Amendment 64 allows us to have because we differentiated between adult-use marijuana and youth-use marijuana, and so we can have on the state level a conversation very specifically about what marijuana does to developing brains without having to have a conversation about whether marijuana should be legal,” Freedman said.

David Blake, representing the attorney general’s office, pointed out that the message of the “lab rat” campaign was developed by the governor’s office. The attorney general’s office requested that the message focus on youths. He tried to lighten the mood of a stuffy meeting.

“The attorney general’s office provided the money for that program, all of the messaging was determined by the governor’s office. ... I want to make sure that any kind of criticism coming, you own it,” he told Freedman to laughter from the audience.

The awareness effort was launched just days after state health officials announced a 2-point decline in 30-day teen marijuana use since voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2012.

But Freedman cautioned against leaping to conclusions on progress so early in the legalization experiment.

“We are not moving quick to jump to conclusions about how we’re doing,” he said. “These are very complex issues that don’t just respond to how marijuana has impacted it. ... So we do believe this is a five-, 10-year conversation.”

Lawmakers also expressed concerns about not targeting all of Colorado. The “lab rat” campaign is focused on the Denver area. But large swaths of Colorado are not immediately targeted, including Southwest Colorado, where retail marijuana in Durango is expected this fall.

“There is a focus in Denver. ... But this is an opening campaign,” Freedman said. “State tax money will follow with a true statewide campaign that will follow on whatever we learn from ‘don’t be a lab rat.’”

The diverse committee – including lawmakers and representatives from the education, health-care, local government and law-enforcement communities – also discussed a decline in estimates for marijuana taxes.

When voters in 2013 passed a 25 percent overall tax on retail marijuana sales, they were told it would raise about $61 million per year directly for the state. But a June revenue forecast predicted that only $30.6 million will be generated.

Several factors are to blame, including a surge in the medical marijuana registry, in which consumers can bypass the special state taxes with a doctor’s recommendation.

“We need to figure out what the cause of that is,” said Rep. Dan Pabon, D-Denver, who chaired the committee. “The purpose of this committee is to help decipher and discern what’s fact from fiction.”

pmarcus@durangoherald.com