President Barack Obama celebrated his 53rd birthday this past weekend by hitting some golf balls with friends from high school, with whom he was a part of a group called the "Choom Gang."
The three friends, Mike Ramos, Greg Orme, and Bobby Titcomb, who went to Punahou School in Hawaii with Obama, joined the president for a round of golf Saturday morning at Andrew's Air Force Base in Maryland, according to Breitbart News. Obama, nicknamed "Barry" in his high school days, turns 53 on Monday.
The friends named themselves the "Choom Gang," after the dried hemp plant they would smoke in high school. David Maraniss says in his presidential documentary that a penalty was given to smokers in the pot circle who inhaled too soon, and they had to skip a turn the next time the joint came around. Obama would copy elements of football, which he has been a critic of as president, while smoking marijuana with his friends.
"When a joint was making the rounds," Maraniss explains, "he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted 'Intercepted!,' and took an extra hit."
Maraniss said Obama would start several trends for smoking pot while he was a member of the Choom gang, Breitbart News reported. These activities included "roof hits," in which he would roll up the windows and inhale the last trails smoke in the Volkswagen van, and "total absorption," also known as "TA."
"TA was the opposite of Bill Clinton's claim that as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford he smoked dope, but never inhaled," Maraniss said.
Going on golf outings has been common among presidents looking for a break from the office, but it has not gained much positive attention, especially with Obama currently dealing with the conflict between Israel and Hamas, a crisis at the Mexican border, and the House of Representatives voting to sue him for overreach. Obama's rounds of golf have actually been documented by a website, which has found that he is getting close to 200 rounds.
