A letter in the 21st century?

If we want to demystify a situation, our strategy also included how to do it. Through this awareness and demystification campaign, we managed to get two letters with the same content but written at different times to go viral in a message that evidenced the benefits of medicinal cannabis treatment that foundations without budget like El Hérbologo, do to combat diseases through alternative means.

In this case the insight is the social experiment, the letters that change all around the treatment of medical marijuana in our country.

In Chile it is legal to consume marijuana, the how (cultivation and acquisition) is treated as a crime, by Law 20,000 that applies to drug traffickers and has also been applied to patients who use cannabis for medicinal purposes.

El Herbólogo Foundation and the agency, in charge of researching and developing medicinal cannabis treatments, discovered that patients with Parkinson's in Phase IV could control their involuntary movements, temporarily, if an extraction of Compound of 50% THC and 50% CBD is applied daily.

However, that treatment cannot reach more than 40,000 Parkinson's patients in Chile, as well as other diseases, because it is considered a crime to cultivate the cannabis plant or acquire its substrates.

With this background, it was time to take action to demystify the use of medical cannabis, because we knew that by eliminating it’s myths we could make deeper changes.

How did we do it?

From the discovery of the El Herbólogo Foundation and the agency, we set ourselves the goal of viralizing the almost instantaneous benefits in Parkinson's patients in Phase IV who had not been subjected to it.

The viralization of the problem was as simple as a letter and as relevant as the power to write and the right to be heard. Demolishing even the myth that in 2022 the letters are not important.

In the clinical trial the patients write two letters by hand, describing their situation and inviting to see the problem of access to cannabis medicines. The first was written without the treatment and the second after a specialist in cannabis medicine gave them the treatment.

The process was recorded in a documentary where we make visible the opinions of different authorities in relation to medicinal cannabis treatments. It was later viralized through a PR strategy.

The communication objective was to make the benefits of this treatment go viral so that both the decision-making authorities and the general public would become promoters of deeper legislative changes that would allow these patients to recover their dignity.

How could we make an idea go viral without budget? Resorting to an instrument that could be considered obsolete in the world of Whatsapp, TikTok or Telegram but that was simple in its execution and powerful from its visualization: A letter written by hand in two different moments.

And although the exercise is simple for most of us, a letter written by a Parkinson's patient is quite a challenge since they doesn't have control of his movements and any activity can be considered painful.

We discovered that a letter in 2021 has a lot of power to debunk myths and restore dignity to Parkinson's patients.

We conducted the clinical trial for one hour with each of the patients, first they wrote the letter without any treatment and then a specialist provided the treatment and they were asked to rewrite the letter. The result was very evident.

We send more than 100 copies of the letters to different influencers from different dimensions such as: Politics, education, religion, medical specialist. And 400 copies to the general public.

Each letter contained a QR invitation to a landing page “Letters for a Law” where the documentary, the experiment and the project was also hosted.

The viralization was organic and the results exceed our expectations.

The Letters for a Law campaign managed to show and reach people who were unaware of El Herbólogo Foundation, generating interest in how to be part of this project with relatives who suffer from Parkinson's.

In three days the landing page received more than 10,000 visits.

Within a week, more than 100,000 people viewed the campaign on Instagram. In the same period Instagram followers growth reached 18%.

Five days after the release of the documentary, the IACHR made official the Chilean State for the application of a law against the trafficking of marijuana in medicinal therapy. Today 33,400 people signed for cannabis, its medicinal use and regulation to be part of the Constitution.

Most importantly, in a few minutes we gave back the power to express themselves to Parkinson patients, we helped make their pain visible and amplify their defenders, all to restore their dignity.

In Chile it is legal to consume marijuana, its acquisition and cultivation for medicinal uses, is a crime.

It was time to demystify before the authorities and the country in general, the use of medicinal cannabis to improve the quality of life of Parkinson's patients.

Legislative decision makers and opinion generators as well as the general public and Parkinson's patients to whom cannabis medicine temporarily helps to control their movements and restore dignity in their daily lives.