OBAMA AND THE CHOOM GANG

President Barack Obama’s pot smoking days have been given the Taiwanese animation treatment.
The prolific company, called Next Media Animation, has used an unpublished biography of the President’s younger years as the basis of their latest cartoon salacious re-enactment.
David Maraniss’ book, the yet-unreleased “Barack Obama: The Story”, reveals how a teen Obama and his friends formed The Choom Gang – slang for smoking marijuana – in which he invented inhaling techniques and rode a car called the Choomwagon.

The 2-minute animated clip takes inspiration from Mr Maraniss’ research about Mr Obama when he was a teenager in 1970s Hawaii.
Playing on the acronym for the President’s nickname, the clip is titled “Obama and marijuana: POT-us dope-smoking daze revealed.”
It shows him sitting in the Oval Office, frustrated at the stagnant economy, and quickly an imaginary pot dragon wisks him away to his high school days in the Choomwagon.
He and his buddies proceed to take strong hits off of a bong before racing eachother in cars while high.

The dream ends when one friend flips over his car- which Mr Maraniss asserts as a truth in his book- and Mr Obama wakes up, rolling on the floor of the Oval Office. The first lady’s back is to the camera and she glares at her disobedient husband before he sobers up.
The revelations about young Barry’s drug use come weeks after Mr Maraniss released an excerpt about his college girlfriend and their sex life.
Though the President has disclosed his drug use in previous statements- including a portion of his memoir- the new details may surprise some because of the extent of his usage.
Among his friends, Mr Obama was considered the rule maker of the pot-smoking group. One was “total absorption” or ‘TA”, the rules of which stated that if you exhaled early, “you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around.”

Another idea was “Roof Hits” – rolling up car windows to stop smoke blowing out and going to waste.
‘\”Wasting good bud smoke was not tolerated,’\” an old school friend told the author.
Maraniss goes on to reveal he was known for his ‘interceptions’ when a joint was being passed around.
‘He often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted “intercepted”, and took an extra hit,’ he writes.
The anecdotes are from Obama’s time studying at Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii and Occidental College in Los Angeles.

One of Obama’s friends, Mark Bendix, had a Volkswagen microbus that they called ‘the Choomwagon’, the book continues, and they would use it to drive up Mount Tantalus in Honolulu.
Once parked, they ‘turned up their stereos playing Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult and Stevie Wonder, lit up some ‘sweet-sticky Hawaiian buds’ and washed it down with ‘green bottled beer’ (the Choom Gang preferred Heineken, Becks, and St. Pauli Girl).’
The book also documents Obama’s early democratic leanings, explaining that the group operated by concensus and any member could veto a suggestion.
“Whenever an idea was broached, someone could hold up his hand in the V sign (a backward peace sign of that era) and indicate that the motion was not approved”
Lydia Warren and Meghan Keneally 
Daily Mail
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8DLcsQ1fUxk&w=480&l=385]