HIGH TIMES

What are they smoking over there? On January 23, the Times of London
magazine published a story on the popularity of illegal drugs in the U.K.
In addition to a British government survey which found that "nearly half"
of its 16- to 29-year-olds have tried cannabis and hallucinogens, the
writer recounted a Drug Enforcement Administration survey which found that
71 percent of some 40,000 U.S. professionals have experimented with
"controlled substances."

Oops! It turns out the DEA survey was a hoax. The original story was posted
in 1997 on a satirical Web site, www.theonion.com, under the headline, "DEA
Survey: 71% of 'Winners' experiment with drugs."

In polished news style, the story quoted a fictitious DEA researcher, who
said that "winners have an unknown quality that enables them to use drugs
and keep on winning" and cited the Dallas Cowboys as an example of "winners
who achieved greatness while engaging in frequent recreational drug use."

The "winners use drugs" story was reposted on the Web site of the Media
Awareness Project, which provides balanced coverage of drug policy. MAP
Executive Director Mark Greer calls satire "an important communications
vehicle" and says that "only those that briefly scanned the article could
fail to recognize it as satire." (MAP has now labeled it as such.)

So how did it get past the Times? Simon Hills, the editor who commissioned
the story, says he did not question the idea that 71 percent of U.S.
professionals have used drugs, because it "didn't strike me as shocking.
It's not an unimaginable figure." Writer Stephen Kingston did not respond
to a request for comment.