The Australian Government has a new campaign to keep kids away from marijuana.

No longer does marijuana make one a homicidal maniac. Now the message is a little more relaxed. “Pot. It mightn’t kill you, but it could turn you into a dickhead” will appear in magazines and on bus stops.

Other ads include a person in a black and white photo with the quote: “You’ve got great eyes, when they’re not bloodshot,” and “I’d lend you money, but you still owe me from last time.”

Australia is wasting $600,000 to warn students that marijuana will make them an untrustworthy, ugly jerk. In total, the government will spend over $1.3 million in “cannabis information.”

David McGrath from NSW Health said the campaign aimed to prevent people starting to smoke cannabis and to encourage regular users to stop smoking.

He said teenagers’ attitudes towards drug taking needed to be changed.

“It’s important to challenge their perceptions that drug use is normal and to change their perceptions that this will make them either cool or attractive,” he said. Source

When the government tells kids what it believes is “cool and attractive,” one thing is certain: kids will value the opposite. This campaign will make marijuana even cooler than it already is among the targeted age group.