It was only a matter of time before this information came to light, and we have Greens NSW MP Dr Mehreen Faruqi to thank for it.
Remember the NSW Government‘s widely-ridiculed, anti-marijuana Stoner Sloth campaign? The one that tried to warn the kids away from doing the weed by using a beloved creature and a series of #highly #shareable #gifs?
The total costs of this disastrous turd of an idea came to $351,790 and took 265 public servant work hours.
This FOI-obtained data is just the latest fall-out from a campaign that:
- Sent 10,000 unique visitors from Australia alone to the US-based pro-weed site, Stonersloth.com.
- Prompted the National Cannabis Prevention Information Centre to formally request its named be taken OFF the campaign.
- Caused NSW Premier Mike Baird to distance himself from the campaign with a tweet saying it is “quite something” (what, didja not know about the campaign before you picked up a paper, Mike?), which when we went back and checked, was pretty much exactly how PEDESTRIAN.TV described the campaign when we first reported the story.
- Sent the poor social media team behind Stoner Sloth into overdrive.
- Prompted Saatchi & Saatchi to age-shame you for laughing at the campaign, because you’re not the target audience and clearly too f’kn old to get them. (Idk, guilty?)
- Made P.TV do this:
That time Sir David Attenborough met Stoner Sloth.
Posted by pedestrian.tv on Monday, 21 December 2015
Speaking to Guardian Australia, Dr Farqui said: “It is baffling and frankly quite depressing that the NSW Government wasted this much public money and hundreds of hours of public service time on such a poorly conceived idea.”
