Just call him Barack O-bong-a

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This article was published 26/05/2012 (5086 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama inhaled. Frequently, happily and allegedly quite greedily.

Various websites published excerpts on Friday from an upcoming book on the U.S. president containing fresh details about his enthusiasm for marijuana as a young man, adding a bit of levity to a close and increasingly nasty presidential race.

“Barry also had a knack for interceptions,” according to just one anecdote in David Maraniss’s Barack Obama: The Story, slated for release in mid-June.

“When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted ‘Intercepted!’ and took an extra hit.”

When he attended Punahoa prep school in Honolulu in the ’70s, Obama was also at the forefront of ensuring he and his high school pals — known as the Choom Gang, with choom a Hawaiian slang verb for smoking weed — got the most bang for their buck.

“Barry popularized the concept of ‘roof hits,'” Maraniss writes.

“When they were chooming in the car, all the windows had to be rolled up so no smoke blew out and went to waste; when the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling.”

The revelations were met with glee in the Twitterverse and beyond.

Buzzfeed entitled its post on the revelations A User’s Guide to Smoking Pot with Barack Obama, while a Twitter wag joked that the Republicans now had potential ammunition in hand.

“If GOP was pro-pot legalization, they could run against President ‘Bogart’ Obama; it’s a real character issue,” tweeted Michael Roston, the home-page producer at the New York Times’ website. (Bogarting is a term that means hogging joints.)

In a country where increasing numbers of Americans think weed should be legalized, few believe the revelations will hurt Obama just six months before the presidential election, even though it’s doubtful Mitt Romney, the buttoned-down Republican front-runner, has ever taken a bong hit.

“I don’t think these stories are going to move anyone on this issue, one way or another,” Ethan Nadelmann, the executive director of the pro-legalization Drug Policy Alliance, said in an interview Friday.

“Part of what made him appealing to young people four years ago was his frankness on marijuana, and his joking around when asked if he inhaled by saying: ‘Wasn’t that the point?’ It made him seem a bit more hip, someone young Americans could connect to.”

A Rasmussen poll released earlier this week found that 56 per cent of Americans believe it’s time to decriminalize pot and regulate it like alcohol and cigarettes. A poll by Gallup last fall suggested a similar trend, with Americans favouring legalization far out-numbering those opposed.

“The Rasmussen poll was a stunning result; it was definitely encouraging,” said Nadelmann.

That’s why Obama’s lack of action in terms of legalizing marijuana has been such a disappointment, he added.

The Obama administration has launched a multi-agency crackdown on cannabis that has included more than 100 raids, mostly on California medical marijuana dispensaries, despite the fact many of them were operating in full compliance with state laws.

Unlike Bill Clinton, who admitted to smoking weed while running for president but famously denied inhaling, Obama has always been open about the fact that he toked in high school and college.

— The Associated Press