An Australian anti-marijuana campaign that features an intoxicated sloth has drawn expert criticism and online mockery.

The Stoner Sloth campaign, financed by the New South Wales state government, aims to stop teens smoking marijuana.

The sloth character is shown as unable to cope with various social scenariosafter smoking the drug.

Australia's National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre (NCPIC) criticised the campaign.

"[This] doesn't reflect NCPIC views on how cannabis harms campaigns should be approached", the organisation said in a statement..

Miss Universe Australia, Monika Radulovic, has caused a stir by stating that marijuana should be legalised during questions she was asked in the final stages of the Miss Universe competition.

Ms Radulovic from Sydney made the top five of the Miss Universe competition - but narrowly missed out on making the final three at the Planet Hollywood Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas on Sunday night.

The 25-year-old beauty's response may have hit her hopes of winning the competition, while also upsetting anti-drug campaigners in her home country. 

During the question and answer segment of the competition, the show's host, comedian and television personality Steve Harvey, cut straight to the chase. 

BEN OAKLEY is a young Aussie who unapologetically breaks the law twice a day to fight an illness so fearsome that it almost destroyed him.

At 17, he fell victim to a one-­in-­a-­million disease that strikes the nervous system, known as Stiff Person Syndrome.

It relentlessly shocks the body with “Taser-­like” pain and progressively stiffens the muscles in the spine and legs.

Oakley, from Wollongong south of Sydney, had just finished year 10 at a Catholic high school when his life’s trajectory was thrown violently off course. Up until then the go-­getter teen thought nothing of running half­ marathons or taking part in charity bike rides.

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.

‘Stoner sloth’ anti-drug campaign gets reality check as medical experts walk away

A leading drug research centre has distanced itself from the NSW government’s bizarre “stoner sloth” campaign, which attempts to warn teenagers against the dangers of sustained marijuana use by depicting them as disturbingly oversized versions of the South American mammal.

In a pyrrhic victory for the NSW government, the stoner sloth campaign has gone viral but the anti-drug message appears to have lost out to the internet’s dual love of mocking failed ad campaigns, and sloths.

How quickly internet videos become cult classics in this viral cyber world. It’s just a matter of hours. So it has proved with an attempt by the NSW government to use cute humour to woo youth away from marijuana, the possession of which remains illegal in Australia.

The three-video campaign, titled “You’re worse on weed”, has so far backfired, as measured by the response on social media, which is where many among the target audience dwell. It trended impressively on Twitter for unintended reasons.

This is either the worst anti-drug campaign we’ve seen, or the very best.

“Stoner Sloth” is a series of videos purportedly meant to illustrate the horrors of marijuana to impressionable teens. The videos star people in large sloth costumes struggling through various life events due to how high they are. At the end of each ad -- after the featured sloth has had trouble in class or embarrassed itself at dinner -- the tagline “You’re Worse On Weed” is plastered across the screen.

Khaliesha Amin is helping her ­island reinvent itself beyond mining, and beyond the once-booming business of immigration detention.

For more than 100 years, the export of phosphate rock to Asia has sustained Christmas Island, 2700km northeast of Perth. It is how Ms Amin’s grandfather and father earned a living. She has worked for the mine since 2007 and it remains the island’s biggest employer of locals, directly responsible for more than 200 jobs.

But the company estimates there is at most 10 years of export production left. During the past decade, the Coalition and Labor have shown a reluctance to allow mining to expand on the island, which is home to several endemic species and is now more than 60 per cent national park.

A MOTHER who legally treats her daughter’s seizures with cannabis oil has admitted she is also using the drug to treat her six-year-old son’s ADHD.

Cherie and Trevor Dell had already been using medicinal cannabis oil to help treat their three-year-old daughter Abbey, who suffers a rare genetic disorder known as CDKL5, which ­results in constant violent ­seizures.

But their decision to also use it on their son Wyatt, 6, could see them fall foul of the authorities.

Wyatt has both autism and attention deficient hyperactivity disorder, which has left him prone to violence.

He has thrown tables around his grade one classroom and made life a misery for his five brothers and sisters.