I needed a good laugh

Well, at least until it's less obvious that he's not joking

Wait, what's that, he's not just playing a character like Colbert does? And thus people won't get the jokes? In fact, that the audience for such things is precisely the sort that doesn't get that Colbert isn't playing a complicated joke already. Like so: "Then again, a whole lot of Republicans believe Stephen Colbert’s fake persona is for real."...

So... we're left with a lot of people who will now believe, more probably continue to believe and are reinforced in that (false) belief, that it is necessary to use draconian and intrusive police powers of the state to control crack addicts because they are violent and dangerous people. And of course as we all know, all people who use/used/will ever use cocaine are crack heads. Depressing.

Cocaine and heroin are generally on the list that most people aren't comfortable legalising alongside marijuana (which many people are quite comfortable with making legal in one form or another). But it shouldn't be necessary to spread blatant falsehoods about the nature of drug use, the nature of drug abuse, and the nature of the people involved in order to maintain the illegality of the substance. It should also be possible to look at the situation abstractly and look for ways that would most efficiently, and without intrusive state powers, reduce such drug abuse and perhaps even use (if desired) on the assumption that it is drug consumption that is supposedly the problem and not drug trafficking, which exists merely to feed the demand. But, of course, sadly we live in a world where the corner solutions are the only answers and the only way to respond is to make a satirical show mocking the people who force us to live that way.

It's almost enough to make one take up a drug habit to deal with it.