The year that drug use was most frequently in the news was:

• A. 1956
• B. 1966
• C. 1976
• D. 1986

Answer: (D)

The amount of drug-use news tends to rise when a large, public crisis is at hand and there’s strong policy action around it. In the mid-1980s, the crack cocaine epidemic dominated headlines nationwide, and there were sweeping policy responses and high-profile anti-drug campaigns. This combination created a lot of news coverage that year, more than in earlier decades. Earlier periods did have drug-related stories, but they didn’t trigger the same scale of national attention or rapid policy response, so the overall news frequency was not as high. That mix of a vivid crisis plus a strong public policy push makes the year 1986 stand out as the time when drug use was most frequently in the news.