Quite wide circles - have you not seen it in memes? - and why were they called Hoffman lenses then? John carpenter was a bit of a hippy you know. Either way, the lenses being lsd or not doesn't affect the political message of the story (what would the lenses represent otherwise - marxism? Chomsky? etc - be a bit boring then)

Anyway, it's not just me:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Psychonaut/comments/298ejh/interesting_lsd_reference_in_they_live_1988/

Another fun fact:
"The film itself is based on the incredibly short story “Eight O’Clock in the Morning” by Ray Nelson. Nelson was an associate of Philip K. Dick (they collaborated on “The Ganymede Takeover”), and the man who allegedly introduced PKD to LSD. "