Obama signs anti-smoking legislation.

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Obama:"You know, I made some bad decisions that I've actually written about. You know, got into drinking. I experimented with drugs," he said. "There was a whole stretch of time that I didn't really apply myself a lot. It wasn't until I got out of high school and went to college that I started realizing, 'Man, I wasted a lot of time."'

Obama has written about his drug use in his memoir, "Dreams from My Father." "Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final fatal role of the young would be black man," Obama wrote. Mostly he smoked marijuana and drank alcohol, Obama wrote, but occasionally he would snort cocaine when he could afford it.

Photo: Creative Commons/Miserlou

Cocaine is consumed orally, injected, smoked or sniffed. Orally, cocaine is consumed either by chewing the coco leaves or by stuffing the cocaine powder between the gums and the teeth. When cocaine powder is used, it is rubbed along the gums or smoked through a cigarette. It causes a numbing effect on the teeth and gums. Cocaine remaining after snorting is generally used during such methods. If coco leaves are used, then they are chewed in the same way as tobacco leaves. But they are consumed after mixing it with lime and when chewed the acids of the leaves are absorbed by the cheek membranes and gastrointestinal tract which then blends into the blood stream. Snorting is a common form of consuming cocaine wherein the crystalline form of cocaine is inhaled through the nose in an intense manner right through the nasal passages where the cocaine is absorbed in the blood stream through nasal membranes. Addicts use any object available to snort cocaine like plastic straws, rolls made of notes or paper, or tubes. Before the cocaine is snorted it is grinded with a razor blade or a professional grinder to minimize the burning effects of the acid on the nasal membrane.

Drugs, Obama wrote, were a way he "could push questions of who I was out of my mind, something that could flatten out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory."

"I am against smoking and if I had any willpower I would quit."

Journalist: Mr President don't you think it is unwise for a man who cannot control his impulse to smoke, to be in charge of the armed forces of America, including nuclear weapons?"

Pres. to secret service aide: "Get the name of that man and check him out."

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The man who said he quit cocaine in college, cannot stop smoking. Is he a smoking gun in world politcs?

(Ric)

Is Obama bi-sexual? Video http://yannone.blogspot.com/2009/06/barack-obamas-homosexual-experience.html

What could she do about it?.......................................................................................................

The toll of smoking in the US and around the world

Some teens are not so concerned about the risk of disease later in life. But the fact is, cigarettes cause emphysema, lung cancer and heart disease, and 4 out of every 10 smokers later die from their addiction to tobacco. Nearly all of them got hooked as teens.

According to a US Surgeon General's Report issued in May, 2004, smoking is even worse than previously thought. It damages virtually every organ in the body.

In the US, smoking causes 1 of every 5 deaths. Cigarettes kill 1,200 Americans every day — a tragic death toll of 420,000 Americans each year.

Around the world, smoking now kills five million people every year. In the US, 22.5% of adults, or a bit more than one in five, are addicted to smoking. But because smoking rates in Europe and Asia are so much higher, on average, one in three adults worldwide smoke. And smoking kills 4 out of every 10 smokers.

If we do the math, this means that in coming decades, cigarettes will actually kill 500 million people — and all of them have already been born. That's nine percent of the present world population. It means that almost 1 of every 10 people now alive on earth will die because of tobacco use. These statistics come from the United Nations World Health Organization, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

Every day in the US, 2,000 teens become newly addicted to smoking. Think about it: most will not be able to quit for 17 years, and over 800 of those teens will later die from cigarettes.No smoking: Historic vote could bring new limits Jun 11, 8:24 PM (ET) By JIM ABRAMS

(AP) Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn, second from left, speaks on the passage of legislation that gives... Full Image

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate struck a historic blow against smoking in America Thursday, voting overwhelmingly to give regulators new power to limit nicotine in the cigarettes that kill nearly a half-million people a year, to drastically curtail ads that glorify tobacco and to ban flavored products aimed at spreading the habit to young people.

President Barack Obama, who has spoken of his own struggle to quit smoking, said he was eager to sign the legislation, and the House planned a vote for Friday. Cigarette foes said the measure would not only cut deaths but reduce the $100 billion in annual health care costs linked to tobacco.

Fierce opposition by the industry and tobacco-state lawmakers had prevented passage for years, along with veto threats by the George W. Bush White House. In the end, the nation's biggest tobacco company supported the measure, though rivals suggested that was because it could lock in Philip Morris' share of the market.

Cigarette smoking kills about 400,000 people in the United States every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 45 million U.S. adults are smokers, though the prevalence has fallen since the U.S. surgeon general's warning 45 years ago that tobacco causes lung cancer.

(AP) An unidentified man walk past a discount cigarette shop Thursday, June 11, in West Columbia, S.C.... Full Image

The legislation, one of the most dramatic anti-smoking initiatives since the surgeon general's report, would give the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate the content, marketing and advertising of cigarettes and other tobacco products