It would not be the last time that GHB was mistakenly implicated in a death by legal authorities and by the media. "In one 1997 case, police in Georgia's Douglas County promptly assumed that GHB had caused the sudden death of a sixteen-year-old boy, who subsequently proved to have perished from a congenital birth defect under the influence of neither drugs nor alcohol" (Jenkins, p. 173).

Reports in CNN, Time, 20/20, ABC News, Seventeen, St. Louis Dispatch, Denver Post, The Daily News, The New York Post, Sassy, the Minnesota Daily, and various other sources of information (local and national, entertainment and news) continued to spread allegations of GHB's role in overdoses, murders, and rapes. Throughout, the media selectively reported facts and effectively misled the American public as to the actual threat posed by GHB. In one episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, the host referred to there having been "thousands" of sexual assaults linked to GHB, warning women never to let men hold their drinks at clubs, never to drink from opened containers, and always to bring their own drinks to parties (Jenkins, p. 180). In fact, no figures even remotely close to Oprah's estimate have ever been reported; even the Drug Enforcement Agency - whose perspective in such matters is not quite impartial - has stated that 20 sexual assaults have been related to GHB in the last ten years, a number that pales in comparison to the number of such crimes associated with alcohol, cocaine, ecstasy, or even marijuana ("GHB").

Scientific data also confute the "date-rape drug" myth. One recent study states, "The use of drugs in the crime of date or acquaintance rape has resulted in some drugs being known as 'date rape drugs.' Examples include flunitrazepam (Rohypnol), gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB), and ketamine. This study examined the incidence of drug use in sexual assault in the USA." The study tested blood samples from victims of sexual assault who believed that they had been drugged. Significantly, no drugs were found in nearly half of the samples (Hindmarch). This, in and of itself, supports the contention that the public reaction to GHB is an instance of mass hysteria; false memories of this sort are classical symptoms (Altman).

Even of the samples where drugs were found, alcohol was far and away the most common, present 37% of the time. Cannabis ranked second, with 18.5% frequency. Only 4.4% showed evidence of GHB. Indeed, another 17 drugs were found, including cocaine and opiates. According to the researchers, "Alcohol is the drug most often associated with sexual assault" (Hindmarch).

And yet, low as it may be, this study’s finding of 4.4% may be somewhat exaggerated. At the time of the study, Hoffman-LaRoche, Inc., was lobbying to remove its product, Rohpynol, from the Date Rape Drug bill. The pharmaceutical company funded this study in order to show that Rohpynol is less often used than GHB in assault, and therefore that it should not be added to Schedule I. Not surprisingly, its lobbying efforts were successful: Hoffman-LaRoche's Rohpynol ("roofies") was removed from the bill, while GHB – medically effective but cheaply and easily manufactured from unpatented common chemicals – was not.

An impartial study provides more reliable results: "Alcohol was present in 208 cases (36 percent), marijuana in 93 (17 percent), tranquilizers in 49 (8 percent) and cocaine in 40 (7 percent)." Once again, researchers did not find any drugs in 40% of the samples; moreover, GHB was not discovered at all. One researcher said, "From what we are seeing now, it does not seem that any one drug is responsible" (Cole, R.). Furthermore, recent surveys of GHB-related hospitalizations indicate that 79% of patients were male, suggesting that the media's focus on women is disproportionate to the real incidence of GHB-related illness, and probably also to the rate of use (Cameron).

Catherine Dougherty suspects that suggestion is a factor in the 40% false-alarm rate. Dougherty is a “registered nurse and qualified Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner who works with rape victims in Monmouth County, N.J.,” according to Associated Press writer Richard Cole. He quotes Nurse Dougherty as saying, "A lot of my colleagues who suspected the use of date rape drugs have sent out samples, and I don't know any who have gotten positive hits.” Dougherty beleives that women may have been influenced by press coverage of date rape drugs. "They've really plastered headlines around that make women a little bit frightened" (Cole, R.).