"I think that's kind of cruel: I'm smoking and you come up coughing at me. Jesus. You go up to crippled people dancing, too?"
But for some people, any sort of run-in with drugs, including alcohol — and in some cases, extended to smoking and even prescription drugs as well — makes you instantly less of a human being.
These people feel not only that alcohol and other drugs should be avoided, but that those who don't accept this philosophy are weak, brainwashed, generally inferior. In especially extreme cases, this attitude even applies toward people who have recovered from past problems with drugs, or have only done them once. Naturally, such people also often double as Moral Guardians.
Direct descendant of the Dry Crusader and often shares the Dry Crusader's self-righteousness. Sister Trope to Sour Prudes, who take a similar condescending attitude to characters who indulge in sexual activities.
Not to be confused with Straight Edge Evil, although villainous straight-edge characters often fall into this. If too villainous or smug, it's not unheard of for the Smug Straight Edgers to be less than sincere in their convictions, if not an outright Straw Hypocrite. Contrast Drug-Based Characterization, where a character's needs and motivations are reflected by the drugs they take.
No Real Life Examples, Please!
Examples:
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Advertising
- PSAs can get in this territory sometimes. This mainly depends on whether or not The Aggressive Drug Dealer is present or not - if not, chances are the blame will fall on the people doing drugs.
- Anti-tobacco "Truth" commercials are made of this.
- Dave Barry mentions a commercial with two little girls that is so smug that it makes you want to inhale a pack of Camels out of spite.
Comic Books
- Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow, had a very negative view of drug dealers and users, and like many other Badass Normal, thought himself better than they were for staying straight. Then his sidekick Speedy started doing Heroin. The ensuing confrontation went...badly.
- Later a Retcon in the Green Arrow: Year One mini-series gave Oliver some motivation for this attitude, other than misdirected anger at himself for neglecting his sidekick - he had been injured while defending the enslaved population of a tropical island turned drug-farm and the only painkiller available to the woman who treated his wounds was heroin. Ollie just barely survived the withdrawal, which left him wondering how anyone could willingly subject themselves to such an experience.
- Todd Ingram from Scott Pilgrim, who says a big part of committing to veganism is knowing that you're better than most other people. Granted, this is a world where going vegan gives you powerful psychic abilities. He also isn't even a real vegan (well, he seemed to think so in the movie). Subverted with the other vegans seen, though.
Films — Animation
- The 1991 short film Huh?
by Mike Judge features the protagonist watching a public service announcement by the "Militant Activists Against Everything" that gets increasingly aggressive. One of the insults hurled by the man in the film is "You probably smoke, too!"
Films — Live-Action
- One of Bob Roberts' songs is titled "Drugs Stink", and contains the lyrics "Drugs stink/They make me sick/Those that sell 'em/And those that do 'em/String 'em up/From the highest tree/Without a trace of sympathy."
- Saruman shows these tendencies in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey by criticizing Radagast's consumption of mushrooms. In The Lord of the Rings, he makes similar comments about Gandalf's use of pipeweed. Saruman's a hypocrite since he has a large stash of pipeweed too (according to LotR's Appendices, the tobacco crop of the entire South Farthing).
- A Tale of Two Cities: Charles Darnay's disapproval of Sydney Carton's drinking problem leads Sydney to say, "You are smug, Mr. Darnay, when you ask why people drink." Sydney goes on to say he drinks so he can tolerate people like Charles. (Later, to himself, he admits that the real reason he dislikes Charles is that Charles reminds him of what he could have been if not for his drinking.)
Literature
- In Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October, the Navy doctor is smug about the fact that he doesn't drink, smoke, or use caffeine. It turns out that while he is indeed arrogant about this and is willing to acknowledge that fact, he does make a more nuanced argument against doing so in a hospital when a dumbass KGB agent nearly kills his patient by trying to light a cigarette in a room full of oxygen.
- In The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape encourages what he calls "the gluttony of delicacy," where people indulge in very small amounts of food, tea, alcohol, etc. and look down on those who take more. When humans are established in this habit, they are a pain to everyone around them because they don't realize how selfish they are; to their minds, a little entitlement is acceptable because they "don't want much."
- In PartnerShip, Nancia's first brawn Caleb has such a strict and limiting code of honor that even a single off-duty alcoholic beverage would compromise it, and he's affronted when one of Nancia's friends offers to buy him a drink.
- The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has the Scrubb family as a satire of this mentality.
Live-Action TV
- The mindset (although not necessarily the movement itself) is parodied in Black Books; at one point, a rather uptight looking customer approaches the shabby, chain-smoking alcoholic Bernard in the shop while he's smoking a cigarette and rather pompously says "You know, I'm inhaling a lot of second-hand smoke from you." Bernard nonchalantly responds with: "Don't worry about it, buy me a drink sometime."
- In one episode, Fran takes up yoga with a friend who turns out to be the New-Agey version of this, berating Fran for drinking, smoking, eating wheat or meat or chocolate, and hanging out with people who do all of the above. Fran tries to emulate her, briefly turning into a smug straight edge herself, but cracks by the end of the episode and returns to being the dissolute chain-smoker Bernard knows and tolerates.
- The Good Place: Every action someone performs in life gives them either a positive or a negative effect to their total score, which ultimately determines which afterlife they end up in. Eating vegan gives a reasonable bonus... but not bragging about it gives over twenty times as much.
- There's a smug Straight Edge guy at the quiet mining town in Skins, who tries to woo Effy. When the crew escapes the town, they mock his crossed arms salute.
Music
- Gry Jannicke Jarlum's "Svake mennesker" ("Weak People") is one long rant against people who smoke and/or drink. The narrator believes they only started doing these things because "everyone else did it", and they were too "weak" to say no. She also says they're ugly and stinky, while she, the teetotaller, has "style" and "character".
- After making a lot of music about being on drugs, Eminem claimed to have given them up in 2002. Many of his diss tracks in 2003-5 involve smarmily raised middle fingers at his enemies for being worthless junkies for smoking weed, snorting coke or taking ecstasy (which just a couple of years prior had been Eminem's signature favourite substance and brazenly gobbled up by him in public and on stage). Considering Em's personality, the irony here is likely intentional. However, Eminem had not stopped using sleeping pills and painkillers and was in fact a far worse addict of them than he'd ever been to illegal drugs. After Eminem got clean for real, he becomes much more compassionate towards drug abusers and addicts, even towards his mother, who was one of his main nemeses previously. However, on Kamikaze and Music To Be Murdered By, he gets back into chewing out modern rappers for drinking lean and giving themselves too much brain damage to be able to rap. (To be fair, Em knows first-hand how much worse opioid addiction can make you at rapping.)
Professional Wrestling
- Cactus Jack did a few promos in ECW bragging about how hardcore he is and did brag about never using drugs in high school or during his at the time 10-year career.note
- CM Punk has this as a catchphrase - "straight edge means I'm better than you" or "drug-free, alcohol-free, and better than you". The opening of his ROH\FIP theme, Miseria Cantare - AFI, even had him boasting about his straight edginess. When Punk works heel, he is of this sort and takes every opportunity to gloat about his straight-edge lifestyle.
- Daniel Bryan in 2012, while not straight edge per se, repeatedly bragged that being a vegan makes him better than everyone, and even mocked people and said they're eating garbage when they try to eat meat. CM Punk threatened to sue him for gimmick infringement.
- Late 1970s WWE, with a line Punk should have stolen: From an interview Vince McMahon was conducting with The Grand Wizard and "Crazy" Luke Graham:
"We think it is the booze in the fans that is causing them to boo us because everyone who's not imbibing knows greatness when they see it!"
Roleplay
- Finn from Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues viciously mocks other students who smoke or do drugs in their free time, believing that they're ruining their futures by doing so.
Stand-Up Comedy
- Bill Hicks did a bit about the smugness of non-smokers, saying "I'd quit if it wasn't for the fact that I'd become one of you."
Video Games
- Measurehead from Disco Elysium does not engage in alcohol (or AL GUL, as he calls it), drugs, or masturbation, and will not stop lording it over The Alcoholic Detective. It's a surprisingly fundamental part of his batshit-insane racial theory: He believes all three of these to be why white people (or the "ham sandwich race" in his words) fell off Master Race status and why the Semenese like him have taken their mantle, while also showing personal disappointment in the latter for what he considers a deeply embarrassing interlude with cocaine and disco music.
- Frank spends the entirety of House Party (2017) keeping the other party-goers from drinking any alcohol; he wasn't even invited to the party, he just makes it his mission to attend parties nearby and keep the liquor on lockdown. He's also a giant hypocrite about it — not only will he allow you to take some alcohol if you perform favors for him, but he's also a drug dealer in the neighborhood.
Visual Novels
- During Hatoful Boyfriend Yuuya takes sleeping pills to access a shared dream, then is injected with psychotropics to give him an advantage. Nishikikouji Tohri, looking on, is appalled by this behavior and berates Leone for lax morals - after administering the dose Leone asked him to use.
Webcomics
- Grrl Power: Peggy (The Team Normal) describes superpowers as being vegan. "They can't wait to tell you about it."
Peggy: I generally don't have to ask why someone can't eat out at my favorite Tex-Mex place with me, or if they just installed solar panels on their house, or that they can shoot laser beams out of their nipples. They will volunteer that information.
- Bort the lapsed Straight Edge from Nothing Nice to Say hasn't abandoned two parts of the straight edge lifestyle; taking himself too seriously and beating people up.
Western Animation
- Metalocalypse featured one Rikki Kixx, who runs a rehab movement and fronts a newly clean-and-sober band — it turns out sobriety has been legally and medically forced on him (and the potential loss of PR he'd get if he was caught imbibing doesn't help) and he's determined that everyone else should be as miserable as he is. The concert he headlined to promote his movement ends horribly, as a little-known side effect of a drug his bandmates took in the past kicked in, causing hallucinations in the audience, leading everyone to turn to drugs to cope with them. It doesn't help that his other big-name sobriety partner, Dr. Rockso, failed the Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere trope and fell off the wagon. And Pickles beats the shit out of him.
- On A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, often the villains got involved with drugs (Yuck! Patooie!), and that's why they are messed up. A good example is a former skateboarding champion who's "no good at all" after he tried steroids.
- South Park portrays Rob Reiner this way in his crusade against smoking. It also portrays him as a hypocrite, indulging in unhealthy eating habits while lecturing people about how unhealthy smoking is.
- This same episode features the boys being mortified at a Totally Radical school assembly that discourages smoking. The performers close out by saying if they don't smoke, they can be just like them. Smash Cut to the boys behind the school smoking as many cigarettes as they can. Said critics at the time...
Times Higher Education: Teachers to whom I've shown these clips sigh in recognition.The Battaltion: Watch the 'Butt Out' episode of South Park if you were not fortunate enough to witness such a spectacle as a preteen. Granted, the truth is substantially less ridiculous, but it is still incredibly, nauseatingly self-consciously hip.
- This same episode features the boys being mortified at a Totally Radical school assembly that discourages smoking. The performers close out by saying if they don't smoke, they can be just like them. Smash Cut to the boys behind the school smoking as many cigarettes as they can. Said critics at the time...