The online "deck of cards" pillories public figures such as Bill Clinton and chancellor Alistair Darling while encouraging web users to volunteer their own "hypocrites" with accompanying quotes to complete the set. The device is a tactic to draw attention to World Anti-Drugs Day and is the latest phase in the Nice People Take Drugs campaign from the UK charity Release.
British politicians in the deck are headed by David Cameron, the Tory leader, who is quoted as saying: "I did lots of things before I came in to politics which I shouldn't have done," and the former Europe minister Caroline Flint, with the more straightforward declaration: "I took cannabis 20 years ago."
Top of the pack is former US president George W Bush as the "joker", whose quote reads: "I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions. You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried." In contrast, the incumbent US president, Barack Obama, is characteristically less convoluted: "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. I inhaled frequently. That was the point."
Also among the US contingent are the firebrand Republican Newt Gingrich, who reportedly said: "When I smoked pot it was illegal but not immoral. Now it is illegal and immoral. The law didn't change, only the morality. That's why you get to go to jail and I don't."
Sebastian Saville, the chief executive of Release, said the interactive web tool was a novel approach but with serious undertones. "We developed the deck of cards specifically to show the hypocrisy of politicians who talk about their sterling efforts in the fight against drugs when so many of them have taken drugs themselves," Saville said. "The UK public are now well aware that politicians appear to live by their own special rules in many areas – we felt it was time to add drug use to the list."
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