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Drugs

Did Australia Just Legalize Marijuana to Avoid Embarrassment?

After pushing out PSAs warning people about the dangers of smoking marijuana, legalizing weed is a bit like buying a leather jacket.

A still from the very weird NSW anti-weed ads. Image via

A few months ago, the New South Wales government was mocked for a series of ads in which teens were warned that excessive marijuana use could lead to literal transformation into an anthropomorphic sloth. It was such a bad campaign, full of weird hyperbole and oddly un-scary scare tactics that even the international press picked up on the fun. Soon, the campaign was the jazz cigarette butt of the world's joke.

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So embarrassed was Australia by the world's laughter that it overreacted, and took the illegal thing they spent $350,000 warning people against, and have now legalized it. Australia, previously the chilled, hip cousin of the world, had one taste of being Earth's square, and did not like it.

In the drug legalization equivalent of going out and buying a leather jacket, on Wednesday Australia passed the Narcotics Drugs Amendment Bill 2016. And did so with surprisingly little fanfare.

As VICE reported, the new laws have opened the doors for medical marijuana to be cultivated, produced, and distributed within Australia. The debate in the Senate was overwhelmingly in favor of the change, with many Senators sharing touching stories about constituents who were struggling with agonizing conditions, desperate for a respite.

The most surprising part however was just how much consensus there was on what has traditionally been a contentious issue. Especially given our two biggest national debates are focused on should we systemically abuse refugee children and the controversial choice to stop LGBTQIA being subjected to regular bullying. How did the cultivation of marijuana bypass this sort of pathological auto-opposition?

It could be because there's no political upside. Even if you are a fiercely anti-drug Senator who still pines for the fierce prohibition you once saw in Some Like It Hot, it will not be in your best interest to take a stance against the issue. A poll by Roy Morgan found that a mere 7 percent of Australians were against the legalization of medical marijuana. With numbers like this you can safely vote for a bill like this without looking like Hunter S. Thompson.

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Nevertheless, it is surprising that there has been no significant public debate over the slippery slope that this could conceivably represent. Before you say, "But wait, it would be foolish to assume that the legalization of medical marijuana would necessarily lead to the legalization of recreational marijuana, and even if it did, would that be so bad?" then welcome to the foolishness that is politics, where flawed syllogistic assumptions are basically what passes for debate.

Senator Cory Bernardi once suggested that the best argument against same-sex marriage was that if some people get equality, it will lead to a slippery slope in which too many people will get equality. Too much equality. Yet in a chamber where rhetoric like this is considered par the course, rather than cause to revoke a driver's license, there's been no substantive debate to suggest medical marijuana will turn Australia into a Cheech and Chong movie. And not even one of the good ones like The Corsican Brothers.

Here's that expensive and embarrassing ad

But the most likely explanation is that the sloth ad was so damn embarrassing that both houses of Parliament came together to fix our national shame. And this is where we need to take a negative and turn it into a positive. The $350,000 spent on the anti-cannabis campaign should not go waste. So here are three ways Australia can use the sloth footage in a way that reflects our newfound pro-marijuana national identity.

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1. Sloths are cool. Everyone loves sloths. Christ, have you seen Veronica Mars star Kristen Bell reacting to the news that she was going to meet a sloth? That's how much people love sloths. So keep the "marijuana use will turn you into a sloth" stuff, but get a more upbeat voice-over artist to underscore that this is a transformation that's actually for the best. I'm sure you could get Kristen Bell to do it.

2. Sloths have very poor eyesight. Honestly, most of them can't even tell the Hemsworths apart. It's one of their defining characteristics. (Sloths, not Hemsworths.) And what is one of the top causes of poor eyesight in humans? Glaucoma. And what's acknowledged as the best treatment for glaucoma? If you answered by solving a supernatural mystery with a talking Great Dane, then you are correct. Smoking cannabis turns teens into sloths? No, smoking cannabis gives sloths their eyesight back. That's even better spin than the sort of spin when you mix your weed with tobacco to improve the burn quality and prolong the stash. We didn't even have to google that reference.

3. Sit down, because here's the big one: in 2014, a study found that there are fungal isolates growing in the hair of sloths that are resistant to the parasites that cause, amongst other things, human cancers. In other words, sloth hair might lead to a cure for cancer. That sloth campaign is looking a whole lot different now, isn't it? "Medical marijuana could revolutionize human health… just like this sloth!"

In his definitive King Arthur novel The Once and Future King, TH White suggested that totalitarianism could be defined as "Everything which is not forbidden is compulsory." There's no reason the New South Wales government's marketing department can't take a cue from White. "That thing we told you not to do a few months ago? Now it's great!"

So long as we get sensible health policy out of the deal, we'll go along with anything.

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