Club Nintendo advocates drugs

It’s true, the proof is in the photograph...
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Taken from the Rad Racer section in Club Nintendo magazine, the “Classic” issue circa sometime around 1990? Right there in print, it says: rush, as in high on drugs.

There is technically an explanation for this, but I thought I’d let this stew for a while before giving the explanation in the comments section. Full images of the DPS is below.

I will say this: the image is not a hoax. I have said issue of the magazine, and it does indeed say that, and it was officially printed on behalf of Nintendo in its Club Nintendo magazine.

EDIT:
The simple answer for this that I can work out is: it's actually the South African edition of Club Nintendo and, due to geographical isolation at a time when the internet didn't exist, a physical copy was never checked by the London/European head office.

In the credits on the inside cover, while it says Published by Nintendo Europe, the editorial office was in Doornfontein, South Africa. Now it has to be said, the NES never really sold in SA. I've heard reports from people who swear they saw official PAL units being sold in some places, but I never saw them my entire childhood over there. The Famicom Clone reigned supreme since it would have been considerably cheaper.

Which means this magazine is probably their only real attempt at generating publicity in South Africa. At least that I saw. It was a free supplement in the first issue of a magazine called KIDZ, which was sold through schools. It featured puzzles, comics, film reviews, short stories, game coverage, and other cool stuff that 7-12 year-year-olds would like. Which makes the drug reference all the more strange.

If you check out this link:
http://www.nes-bit.com/?page_id=2818

You'll find a PDF download of what I presume is the UK edition. Notice how the design and colouring is different, though the content, assets and cover are similar. There were obviously editions made for each region, since googling Club Nintendo brings up a German version of the cover. There is no equivalent Rad Racer page that I could find in the above linked version.

My educated guess is that South Africa wasn't high on the priorities of Nintendo, they set up some kind of tiny editorial office which knew the NES was never going to make it even before it came out, and so when redesigning the magazine took liberties with it which were never checked. They would have either have had to send physical copies to Europe for verifying, or faxed them. Assuming they were printed in South Africa. Whatever the case, it's obviously an example of someone given free reign with captions and not being supervised.

Still, it was officially endorsed by Nintendo, so is a fun historical anomaly especially given Nintendo's early sanitised image.