The National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre will ask the NSW Premier's department to retract its claim that the centre's research lay behind its #stonersloth anti-marijuana social media campaign which is going viral for all the wrong reasons.

The campaign, which depicts a stoned sloth failing in class and messing up at the dinner table, is being mercilessly ridiculed by social media users. Many are predicting that, because sloths are cool among young people, the campaign character may be perceived as more loveable than pitiable and it will have the opposite effect of steering young people away from marijuana.

It even attracted the attention of Premier Mike Baird, who tweeted: "Just saw the #StonerSloth ads. Not sure where NSW Gov's ad guys found Chewbaccas siblings, but those videos are... Quite something."