Sure the 1960s were crazy times. The era has become one with drug use and many songs from that era have been tainted with the suggestion that they are about drugs. Was Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds really a code for LSD? (John Lennon always denied this accusation saying that the title was inspired by a drawing that his son had drawn and named). Did the Byrds Eight Miles High refer to a plane ride or another type of flight? The biggest surprise of all was realizing that Puff the Magic Dragon was actually a song about smoking weed.
When one looks at the lyrics, it’s easy to see how this story spread. The name of the song was quite cheeky. Puff was another word for smoke and dragon could be broken down into two words for drag. He took a drag on the pipe and a drag on the joint. Also, what did people who smoked marijuana use to make their joints? Documents. And what is the name of the boy in the song? It was Jackie’s piece of paper. Some have even suggested that Hanah Lee’s magical land was actually Hanalei; a Hawaiian people known for their potent brand of weed.
However, the song’s writers state that Puff The Magic Dragon was a song about the loss of innocence and a boy who outgrew his childish ways. The song began life as a poem written by a 19-year-old Cornell University student, Leonard Lipton. He showed the poem to his friend Peter Yarrow, who put a melody to the poem and added more lyrics. Yarrow went on to form the band Peter, Paul and Mary and his performance as Puff went to number two on the charts.
It wasn’t until after the song hit the charts that the theory that it was a drug song came to light. It is a theory that still exists today despite many public statements by the authors to the contrary. Lipton claimed that his poem was based on the Ogden Nash poem “Really-O, Truly-O Dragon”. He wrote that “[It is about] the loss of innocence and having to face the world of adults. Surely it’s not about drugs. I can tell you that at Cornell in 1959 no one smoked weed… It would be insidious to advertise dugs in a song for little children.”
Peter Yarrow would later add the following comment: “When Puff was written, I was too innocent to know about drugs. What kind of petty son of a bitch would write a children’s song with an understated message about drugs?”