I have this book and CD set, where Peter Yarrow says "IT IS NOT A DRUG SONG) and the ending has a little girl named Jackie meeting up with Puff.
My son had that set when he was little.
Thing is, “Puff” is not a tragic song- it’s a bit wistful, but it’s not as if something terrible has happened.
Little kids have favorite toys and imaginary playmates. When they grow up, they generally give those things up- and they SHOULD! If 4 year old Jackie Paper carries a stuffed dragon with him everywhere he goes, and sleeps with it at night, that’s adorable. If 14 year old Jackie still sleeps with it… not quite as cute. Maybe a little creepy.
Now, as the Dad of a 12 year old boy, I’ve gotten to see the “Puff” story play out in real life many times. I sometimes come across an old toy or stuffed animal my son used to play with, and get a little misty-eyed, remembering how I used to work that toy into my son’s bedtime stories. But my son wasn’t SUPPOSED to stay little forever. He’s SUPPOSED to be the roller blader and budding ladies man he is now.
In a way, “Puff” was a precursor to Toy Story. It treats imaginary playmates as real characters with real feelings.
In the Snopes article, Peter asked “What kind of meanspirited SOB would put drug reference is a children’s song?”
Well, expanding that to children’s entertainment in general, Sid & Marty Krofft?
H.R. Pufnstuf… Lidsville….
The Altered State of Druggachusettes… 
As to the OP, here are two possibilities tho I don’t know if either were what the OP heard…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeuXmMw3w1MA. A. Milne did it before all of them.
And Margery Williams did it before A. A. Milne. No doubt even earlier examples could be found.
Golly. At least this thread is only a little zombied. Yet when I was young, I had some album called something like “Puff the Magic Dragon and other fairy tales” with that rascal Puff and Jackie Paper on the cover.
Rather than create a new thread, I just want to inquire about the verse:
Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail
Jackie kept a lookout, perched on Puff’s gigantic tail
Noble kings and princes would bow whene’er they came
Pirate ships would lower their flags when Puff roared out his name
I seem to recall the album cover showed Puff swimming. Okay, they traveled on a boat.
So this “magic” dragon’s reputation preceded him. Ruh roh, it’s Puff and he must be really mad as he roared out his name
Puff!
“Pretty Scary Kids!” as Joe Flaherty, as Count Floyd would say, often in 3D.
Puff!
Yes, before I knew who Peter, Paul & Mary were I’d figured out the song was vaguely about drugs.
The real drag is your video is blocked by Sony on “copyright grounds” Pufn’stuff and Jack Wild are owned by Sony?
The only Artful Dodger. Dickens would have approved.
And then you eventually learned better, right?
The only thing remotely druggish about the song is the title. It’s not at all ambiguous. It’s just plain not about drugs at all.
Whoa! Waittaminute! I’ve been arguing for years that it isn’t a drug song, it’s about growing up. But I always thought Puff was real (in context). He’s not a stuffed dragon that Jackie has imaginary adventures with. He’s a real dragon that Jackie goes to visit. (It’s a song! Of course that can happen. Why not)
Pooh and Eyeore et al were also real. I’m not sure about Hobbes.
A large number of dopers are wrong:
Hobbes was definitely real. But was Calvin?
I thought about this song this morning, and, while this is pretty certainly not what the author intended, (I think) it can be viewed metaphorically as just the way as we grow up, we start leaving things behind–playmates, toys, family. All sorts of things that we just move on from as we go thru life.
We had that too; if it’s the same one, the last page shows the little girl playing with Puff while her father, who is obviously the adult Jackie Paper, looks on benevolently. It’s very sweet.
If you think that’s pretty certainly not what the author intended, what do you think he intended? I mean, yeah, it’s obviously behind a layer of metaphor, but I would have thought it was a pretty clear metaphor.