A new Australian anti-drug campaign was recently criticized after it made a comparison between marijuana users and a giant tree sloth.
The commercials originated from the New South Wales government where teenage marijuana users were depicted as a very slow sloth.
The first video showed a sloth named Jason, who is incapable of doing even the simplest tasks. The sloth uttered moans of despair as he attempted to pass the salt across the dinner table, in the end passing the salad.
Another video, featured a sloth, named Delilah. She failed to finish an exam and was shamed in class. The last video featured David the sloth, who could not properly answer a statement about a teenager who does not like people who wear socks with sandals. The teenagers, however, were holding red plastic cups, which suggested that alcohol is fine, while marijuana is bad.
At the end of each ad, another teenager disapproves of the effects and says “stoner sloth.” The slogan, “you’re worse on weed,” also appeared.
New York Daily News reported that the anti-marijuana campaign were generally deemed negative. Mike Baird, the Premier of New South Wales, joked about the campaign, indicating that it did not successfully send the message. The National Cannabis Prevention and Information Center, the research team that was connected with the campaign at first, later set itself apart from the ads. There were also plenty of parody videos spawned by the funny failed ads.
“The campaign is not an NCPIC campaign and we weren’t involved in the campaign development. NCPIC was not advised of or consulted about creative concept - the stoner sloth idea - and learnt of it at the same point as all other Australians when the campaign was released this week," the group stated. Furthermore, the group said that the campaign should have avoided hyperbole and treated teenagers as intelligent individuals with access to much information to make the right decision.
Several netizens also posted that the campaign videos seemed to have been ill-advised. Many said that it would be difficult for people to take the ads seriously, The Guardian noted
The campaign was launched in mid-November 2015 but only gained attention in social media a month later. Also, the campaign creators made the error of not checking the name “Stoner Sloth” with other existing terms online. The campaign actually shares a name with an internet cannabis store.
More updates and details about “Stoner Sloth” are expected soon.