It would seem a fairly mis­chie­vously buried lede. The story you expect from the head­line “Old Friends Say Drugs Played Bit Part in Obama’s Young Life” is the story of, well, drugs play­ing a bit part in Barack Obama’s young life. Turns out, as we don’t learn until the sixth para­graph of the arti­cle, the real news is this:

Mr. Obama’s account of his younger self and drugs [in his memoir Dreams From My Father] sig­nif­i­cantly dif­fers from the rec­ol­lec­tions of others who do not recall his drug use.

Or, as the New York Times reporter who filed the story, Serge V. Kovaleski, puts it a little fur­ther on:

In more than three dozen inter­views, friends, class­mates and men­tors from his high school and Occi­den­tal [Col­lege] recalled Mr. Obama as being grounded, moti­vated and poised, some­one who did not appear to be grap­pling with any drug prob­lems and seemed to dabble only with marijuana.

In other words, the story is more about the bit than it is about the drugs.

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