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Daily News’ Drug Story Is Snarf-Worthy

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Sometimes you just have to sit back, put your feet up and bask in the glory that is the Daily News. Or one could laugh, because the paper has the best drug story since the Inquirer’s $100 joints. (To further embarrass the paper, the television news did a better job with this story. That’s like losing to Timmy Kelly in a game of darts.)

Today’s Daily News drug news embarrassment comes from reporter Stephanie Farr in her story, “A drug listed on Web as Snurf should have been labeled Barf.” Council Rock School District Superintendent Mark J. Klein put out a press release about kids at his school becoming ill from an herbal supplement they ordered online. That’s when the Daily News got to work:

But yesterday, the district was stumped when four sophomore boys at Council Rock High School North in Newtown, Bucks County, became ill after ingesting pills known as Snurf.

According to a release from the district - which cited the pills’ packaging as the source of the information - Snurf is an “herbal supplement with mood-altering properties.”

On several blogs, Snurf users liken it to the drug Ecstasy.

“We did the Google and found out more than we needed to know about it,” Klein said.

According to the online Urban Dictionary, Snurf is a pill available on the Internet through herbal dealers. It is often advertised as an herbal supplement, but generally consists of pure dextromethorphan, or DXM, a drug found in many cough syrups that can act as a hallucinogen if taken in large doses. [...] A Drug Enforcement Administration spokeswoman said she had never heard of Snurf and did not think it was a controlled substance.

Apparently, the kids bought what could have been DXM pills online, then attempted to do it at school. (Kids in Yardley are now so lame they can’t even get percocet, apparently.) For some reason, the school district superintendent alerted the media for kids essentially drinking cough syrup. When is he going to tell us about the “rock and roll” music defiling our young minds!

The Daily News, though, did do exhausting research about snurf, consulting several noted experts.

  1. a Council Rock School District press release
  2. “several blogs” (Farr did the Google)
  3. Urban Dictionary

And would it kill her to use the term robotrippin’? Geeze, it’s like these people never even read The Basketball Diaries.

A drug listed on Web as Snurf should have been labeled Barf [Daily News]