The NSW government’s “stoner sloth” campaign is a piece of genius. In the following weeks it will generate more discussion on the nature of cannabis-related harms and the impact on personal and emotional development than the ad agency could have ever hoped for. Already going viral with online parodies wafting behind the originals, it has of course totally missed its audience and aims.

Actually, that might be unfair since I am neither sure of whom the target audience is nor what the aims of the campaign are.

Before I give my considered response as a psychiatrist, addiction specialist and researcher, I need to convey my initial gut reaction to the campaign.

For starters, the cannabis user sitting around a family dinner table with a hot meal and fresh salad is not the user most at risk (though the parents might be voters). Beyond this, the advert was a textbook lesson in how not to do an anti-drugs campaign.

First, it chooses the most derogatory stereotype possible that will immediately disengage virtually anyone who has ever used cannabis. It provides no useful information to the person who uses cannabis nor to those who may be worried about another’s use. It fails to acknowledge that for many people, using cannabis can be fun and relatively free from harm.

What it does is judge cannabis use and those who use it as bad. Full stop. And as anyone of the hundreds of millions of people who have ever got stoned will tell you: that ain’t the truth.

I am not saying that dependent cannabis use and use by the young and those with mental illness cannot be devastating. It can be. I have had patients with schizophrenia whose use of cannabis has been associated with medication non-compliance, violence and suicide. I have a 47-year-old patient with the lung function of a 90-year-old who is unlikely to see his 50th birthday, leaving behind two young children. But I know doctors, teachers, journalists, plumbers and IT geeks who used cannabis and grew up to be happy and mostly functional people.

The problem with mass campaigns such as this is that you have no control over who sees it and it’s probably impossible to avoid upsetting some segment of the population.

If you don’t like pot, and you don’t like what it does to people, this might be the advert for you.

A message that plays down risks and focuses on harm reduction might encourage initiation of use among drug naïve users and upset “parent” voters. Define a person by their drug use and exaggerate the negative and you lose those you might wish to engage.

My guess is that if you don’t like pot, and you don’t like what it does to people, this might be the advert for you. Think of those people who are parents, siblings or partners of long-term stoners. And like it or not, cannabis dependence can slowly and silently make your life worse without ever getting bad enough to seem worth addressing; it may not destroy your life but you’ll miss opportunities, leave potentials unfulfilled and relationships wanting.

The advert is interesting, however, because it focuses on the impact of a person’s drug use on those around them – it tries to humiliate them into desistence or change. These approaches have been used with some success to address issues such as speeding and binge drinking but in the present case I think it will fail to engage those who are those at most risk of cannabis-related harm.

A good cannabis campaign would work in tandem with polices that delayed the age of onset of use, reduced harms common to the majority of users, minimised consumption by the most vulnerable and reduced the risk of progression from infrequent to daily use. It would help friends and family worried about loved ones feel that is OK to say something. A smart campaign would help people who use cannabis to reflect on whether their level of use adds to their life or is starting to detract from it, it would allow a person the space to think it was OK to cut down.

The stoner sloth campaign is dated and reflects politician’s fears of being honest with a voting public that is far more informed and critical than voters in the 1950s.

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It does what most campaigns for or against cannabis does – polarises people in the silos they already inhabit, instead of promoting discussion that moves people to a closer version of the truth, one that lies between these poles.

The NSW government has got the ball rolling but next time they mull over what they should be doing, I would ask they take a deep breath and try something totally novel and lead the world. Be authentic and honest. Task an ad agency to treat people who use drugs as adults, who on the whole do not want to ruin their lives or impact negatively on the lives of those around them.

The first rule of engaging people who use drugs in a conversation about drug use is to be respectful and honest about the drug. Global Drug Survey has tried to do this with the development of the world’s first safer use limits for cannabis based on the feedback from 40,000 cannabis users across the world. Honesty is the best drug policy.