Why do I care?

I don't know.

But I do.

Steve told me today that his dad told him that Barack Obama smokes.

At first I didn't understand.

We were listening to NPR's report on Obama winning Hawaii and Wisconsin and I thought Steve meant that Obama was smoking Clinton.

When I did grasp what Steve was trying to tell me, I was startled. I had my usual reaction to surprising news, I immediately went to Google.

What I turned up seemed mostly dated, stories, articles and posts with dates in 2006 and 2007 which stated that yes, Barack smokes, but nothing recent which confirmed that he's still a smoker. Finally, buried on page 4 of the Google search results, I found a link to an article dated April of 2007 which states that Barack told David Letterman that he had quit.

Is he still a former smoker? I can't say.

And this bothers me.

If he has in fact quit and remains smoke free, I find this admirable.

But if he smokes . . .

Not so much.

Paradoxically, I find Obama's admission that he experimented with marijuana and cocaine honest and acceptable. I find humor in the fact that Reason Magazine says that a

recent New York Times report suggests the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination misled the public about his history of drug use—by making it seem more impressive than it really was.

To paraphrase the old Virginia Slims' tag line, "(We've) come a long way, baby."