"I don't like people who take drugs... Customs men for example"
About this Quote
It lands like a moral complaint and then yanks the rug out: “people who take drugs” turns out not to mean users, but takers in uniform. The pivot to “Customs men” is the whole mechanism - a clean bait-and-switch that exposes how quickly we accept moralizing language until it implicates authority. In one line, Mick Miller turns a familiar, tut-tutting stance into a jab at state power.
The intent is less to defend drug use than to ridicule hypocrisy in the way societies talk about it. “Take drugs” usually codes for indulgence, vice, personal failure. Applied to customs officers, it becomes literal: they confiscate substances for a living. The joke forces you to notice how the same verb can smuggle in judgment, and how enforcement gets exempted from the stigma attached to the thing enforced. It’s not just wordplay; it’s a critique of who gets framed as corrupting society versus who gets paid to “protect” it.
Subtext: the drug war’s moral theater depends on a narrow definition of culpability. The customs man isn’t “taking drugs” in the tabloidy sense, but he is participating in the drug economy through seizure, control, and institutional authority. The gag hints that the clean line between crime and governance is partly rhetorical, not purely ethical.
Contextually, it sits in a distinctly British stand-up tradition: anti-authoritarian, skeptical of bureaucratic sanctimony, and sharp enough to make a politics point without announcing one. The laugh arrives at the moment the listener realizes they’ve already agreed to a premise they didn’t examine.
The intent is less to defend drug use than to ridicule hypocrisy in the way societies talk about it. “Take drugs” usually codes for indulgence, vice, personal failure. Applied to customs officers, it becomes literal: they confiscate substances for a living. The joke forces you to notice how the same verb can smuggle in judgment, and how enforcement gets exempted from the stigma attached to the thing enforced. It’s not just wordplay; it’s a critique of who gets framed as corrupting society versus who gets paid to “protect” it.
Subtext: the drug war’s moral theater depends on a narrow definition of culpability. The customs man isn’t “taking drugs” in the tabloidy sense, but he is participating in the drug economy through seizure, control, and institutional authority. The gag hints that the clean line between crime and governance is partly rhetorical, not purely ethical.
Contextually, it sits in a distinctly British stand-up tradition: anti-authoritarian, skeptical of bureaucratic sanctimony, and sharp enough to make a politics point without announcing one. The laugh arrives at the moment the listener realizes they’ve already agreed to a premise they didn’t examine.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by Mick
Add to List




