Obama's drug cred

So you may have heard that Barak Obama has admitted to using drugs when he was younger, but was he a party animal? The New York Times set out to interview people from Obama's past to see if they could dig up any dirt on the candidate's drug history:

In more than three dozen interviews, friends, classmates and mentors from his high school and Occidental recalled Mr. Obama as being grounded, motivated and poised, someone who did not appear to be grappling with any drug problems and seemed only to dabble with marijuana.

“It didn’t stand out to me,” said Michael Ramos, who was one of Mr. Obama’s closest friends at the Punahou School in Honolulu. “It was not the focal point of our lives. It wasn’t like we all thought we’ve got to do something to help Barack because it’s getting out of control.” About Mr. Obama’s using cocaine, he said, “I didn’t know him to do that.”

Vinai Thummalapally, a former California State University student who became friendly with Mr. Obama in college, remembered him as a model of moderation — jogging in the morning, playing pickup basketball at the gym, hitting the books and socializing.

“If someone passed him a joint, he would take a drag. We’d smoke or have one extra beer, but he would not even do as much as other people on campus.” Mr. Thummalapally recounted. “He was not even close to being a party animal.”

Having gone to the same private high school in Hawaii as Obama (though a few years later), I can say that it caters to Honolulu's wealthiest brats and fine green and coke were fairly easy to find. That said, even I -- the notorious drug journalist -- did not smoke weed or do drugs in high school. Punahou had a zero tolerance policy even on caffeine (yes, all Coke and Pepsi served on campus was caffeine free), and while I was in school the dean's own son got expelled for smoking weed on campus -- flat busted.