While the company behind the coffee seeks to help comedians battling meth addictions, the Illinois Attorney General doesn’t see anything funny about their advertising.

Meth is causing problems for the Illinois Attorney General, but it’s not the drug people are worried about. Meth Coffee is a San Francisco-based brand that takes its name from the highly addictive substance, methamphetamine. Even though the coffee doesn’t actually contain illegal substances, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan found the brand’s name offensive enough to ask the company to stop selling their coffee in Chicago earlier this year.

Madigan claimed that the makers of Meth Coffee, Doll God LLC, were guilty of “misleading marketing and sale of coffee” and said that her office would seek litigation against the company if they didn’t stop selling it in the state of Illinois. Madigan also claimed that Meth Coffee glorified methamphetamine use, is advertised as an illicit drug, and featured meth addicts on their advertising and website.

“Significant resources have been devoted to combating the methamphetamine epidemic in our state, and we are deeply concerned that your marketing of Meth Coffee will perpetuate the use of this devastating drug,” Madigan stated in her letter.

Madigan recently got her way without a fight when the makers of Meth Coffee, which is only sold over the Internet, voluntarily stopped selling their products to Illinois residents. In a press release, Meth Coffee responded to Madigan’s claims and said, “these efforts are misguided and a waste of taxpayer dollars. The Attorney General should be punching drug dealers, not clowns.”

Making meth a laughing matter

Clowns, you ask? Meth Coffee is a joke? In some ways, yes. Meth Coffee is the group effort of comedians and artists who either watched friends battle a meth addiction or wrestled with it themselves. According to their website, Meth Coffee is their way of making fun of the drug while still educating their consumers about its dangers. “We believe that stopping drug use starts with education,” the company stated in the press release aimed at Madigan. This fall, the company even launched the 2008 Comedy Addiction Tour, which featured comedy by recovering addicts.

While the coffee itself might not contain meth, it does contain yerba mate, an herb found in the Amazon that’s often boiled and served as a tea. Yerba mate contains a stimulant, much like caffeine, and added to coffee it ramps up the buzz-inducing properties. It’s not a drug and there’s nothing addictive about it (unless you consider yourself a coffee addict already), but it will guarantee a super-charged jolt.

If you choose to have a look at Meth Coffee’s site, but warned that it contains some mature language and isn’t meant for the overly sensitive. But it is a darkly funny, honest portrayal of what life looks like to someone who’s addicted to methamphetamines and no one can deny these guys are serious about coffee. Seriously funny, that is.

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