THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Barack Obama is not the first President of the United States to confess to experimenting with recreational drug-use in those heady days before the gruelling demands of Washington took over.
However, while Bill Clinton notoriously "didn't inhale" at Oxford, Mr Obama took an altogether more enthusiastic approach to smoking marijuana in his youth, according to a new biography.
As a secondary school pupil in Honolulu, Hawaii, in the late 1970s, Mr Obama is said to have been a member of the "Choom Gang", a group of boys who played basketball and choomed, or smoked dope.
"Barry Obama was known for starting a few pot-smoking trends," according to David Maraniss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. "The first was called 'TA,' short for 'total absorption'." Mr Obama's favoured technique is described as "the antithesis" to Mr Clinton's eyebrow-raising claim to have barely participated in – and certainly not enjoyed – smoking the drug as a Rhodes scholar at University College from 1968 to 1970.
Any Choom Gang members caught daring to exhale before absorption was total "were assessed a penalty" and faced being "skipped the next time the joint came around," according to 'Barack Obama: The Story'.
All told, the future president is said to have been a bit of a drag. "When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted 'Intercepted!,' and took an extra hit," said Maraniss. » | Jon Swaine, Washington | Friday, May 25, 2012
