THE POLLSTER WHO ANSWERED A HIGHER CALLING

Pollster John Zogby had a problem: Too many political conservatives and not
enough lefties were signing up to participate in his online surveys of
public opinion.

Rob Kampia of the Marijuana Policy Project also had a problem: He didn't
know what Americans really thought about legalizing the five-leafed devil
weed.

But both problems went up in smoke recently when Zogby's polling firm
approached Kampia's Marijuana Policy Project with a novel proposition: Help
us recruit smokers and their pals to participate in our cyber-surveys, and
we'll let you add a few dope questions to our national polls.

Kampia jumped at the chance for free market research. And suddenly, Zogby
International, a high-profile polling firm that has worked for some of the
biggest names in the media, politics and corporate America, became a player
in the pot lobby's ongoing war on the war on drugs.

John Zogby, the president and founder of the polling firm, downplays the
arrangement. " 'Relationship' may be too strong a word," Zogby says. "We
have reached out to all sorts of groups to increase our e-mail channel:
conservatives, liberals, libertarians, even normal-type people in both
senses of the word," a reference to NORML, the country's best-known group
seeking to change drug laws.

Word of the deal instantly sent pot opponents eight miles high.

"The insidious inroads that the small but heavily financed drug culture
continues to make into the fabric of society is truly frightening," said
Charles Perkins, president of Drug Watch International, in a prepared
statement. "It is time for the media to expose these lobbyists, just as they
would expose pedophiles who try to influence child abuse laws and
enforcement."

Even some of his professional colleagues wonder what Zogby had been smoking
when he signed on the Marijuana Policy Project to recruit poll respondents.
"You wonder if they'll remember the question long enough" to answer it,
chuckles Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People
and the Press.

Meanwhile, officials at the marijuana group couldn't be more pleased. In a
"Dear Friend" letter sent to its online mailing list, executive director
Kampia explained details of the arrangement, which were confirmed by Zogby
officials:

"You now have a chance to . . . make your opinions count, and help the
Marijuana Policy Project get professional polling done for free! . . . MPP
is teaming up with one of the nation's most accurate and prestigious polling
organizations, Zogby International. "

Kampia went on to note that Zogby is developing a panel of thousands of
individuals who agree to participate in Zogby polls. Participants will be
e-mailed two surveys a month, "which will take a few minutes each to
complete," Kampia wrote. Then he urged pot proponents to register for the
panel online.

"For every 500 registrants we supply, Zogby will place a marijuana polling
question for MPP in one of its nationwide polls -- both online and via
traditional telephone survey methods. Each question would normally cost MPP
$1,000 or more. With more than 12,000 people now subscribed to this
MPPupdates e-mail list, we have the opportunity to get [thousands of
dollars' worth] worth of free survey research -- research that could greatly
benefit our efforts to end the war on marijuana users."

Zogby says the marijuana group does not have carte blanche to ask anything
it wants on his firm's polls. "They submit ideas. But they have to pass our
smell test: The questions have to be balanced, they can't be loaded," he
says. "This is a legitimate public issue."

He says his firm struck the deal after "we became concerned that we were
getting a lot of conservatives" volunteering to participate in online
surveys. "Our e-poll group is very young and very aggressive."

And very successful. Already, more than 1,000 people solicited by MPP have
signed up to participate in the Zogby Interactive Panel, and the firm
already has asked "a few" questions on marijuana issues, he says.

Zogby isn't concerned that the panel will somehow be flooded by marijuana
participants. "We have more than 100,000 participants now," Zogby says.
"There's just not enough to skew things."

Besides, Zogby would make the same offer to an anti-marijuana group, if they
approached him. "If indeed an anti-marijuana group came to us, great, we
would welcome them. There would be some groups we would refuse, but if they
are in the legitimate marketplace of ideas, that's fine."

Some pollsters question Zogby's recruiting methods. A ferocious debate
currently rages in the polling community about the accuracy and reliability
of Internet surveys, virtually all of which are based on Internet users who
volunteer to participate rather than people selected at random.

Adding to the problem is the fact that Internet users tend to be
disproportionately male, white, young and better educated than the rest of
the population. Internet pollsters attempt to correct for the difference by
statistically adjusting their samples to contain the right proportion of
women, older people and those with less education.

But these corrective measures aren't enough, critics charge.

"I could run up and down K Street and select a lot of people and collect
their opinions and statistically manipulate that sample to look like the
United States in terms of race, sex, income and education," says the Pew
Center's Kohut, former president of the Gallup Organization. "But in the
end, it would still be a sample of K Street and the people would still
reflect a different set of views from the country as a whole. It doesn't
work."

But others aren't so sure -- at least not yet. "I don't think we should shut
the door on anything, nor embrace it out of hand," says Lee Miringoff,
director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College in New
York.

Zogby International is now among the most visible private survey companies
in the country. Its client list includes congressional candidates from both
parties as well as Microsoft and Cisco Systems, the U.S. Census Bureau,
Chrysler Corp., State Farm Insurance, USA Today, the New York Post, Gannett
News Service, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Fox Television Network.

Is he worried that some of his corporate clients might be spooked by his
association with a drug group?

"Not particularly," Zogby says. "We're liked by a broad spectrum and reviled
by a broad spectrum. So I think we must be doing exactly what we should be
doing."