Can Obama quit?

Experts and local folks say stress can make a smoker light up again

How successful Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is at quitting smoking could depend on why he does it in the first place. Does he light up simply out of habit, after a good meal perhaps, or while kicking back to watch TV? Or do stressful situations cause the U.S. senator from Illinois to put a match to his Marlboro? Situations such as dealing with reporters lobbing him trick questions?

According to the Chicago Tribune, Obama, who is 45, has been smoking since at least 1979. Before he announced his intentions to quit, he said he typically smoked four or five cigarettes a day, as many as 10 when he was either writing or campaigning.

Lifelong smoker Linda Jones thinks that if Obama, who tossed his hat into the ring over the weekend, smokes as a course of habit, "All he has to do is put his mind to it.

"It can be done," Jones said Monday afternoon on a smoke break from her job as an administrative assistant with the state Department of Public Instruction. "Once you make up your mind, just go cold turkey," said Jones, who has tried to quit twice.

Dr. Jed Rose, director of the Duke Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research, believes it may be a bit more complicated than that.

"Cigarette smoking is strongly linked to psychological stress," said Rose, whose center has studied the effects of stress on smokers. "When smokers try to kick their addiction to cigarettes, one of the most common triggers for relapse is a stressful or emotionally upsetting event. For a smoker with a high-pressure lifestyle, no time will seem like the right time to quit."

Bad news for Obama, who will experience a level of stress few people can imagine as his life is placed under a microscope during the 11 months leading to the first caucuses and primaries, not to mention what would happen if he were the party's nominee in the November 2008 election.

It has been almost 62 years since an unabashed smoker inhabited the White House. Though his paralysis may have been kept a secret from the nation, Franklin D. Roosevelt was frequently pictured with a steely glint and chomping a cigarette holder. Ever since, though, the Oval Office has been smoke-free. (Although smoking in the White House wasn't banned until 1992.)

Dwight D. Eisenhower reportedly quit his four-pack-a-day habit before being elected in 1952. Lyndon Johnson likewise gave up smoking before becoming John F. Kennedy's vice presidential running mate prior to the 1960 election. Richard Nixon was smoke-free by the time he finally landed the White House in 1968. And though Ronald Reagan hawked Chesterfield Kings during his acting days in the 1940s, his vice-of-choice by the time he was elected in 1980 was jelly beans.

A president or two since has indulged in the occasional cigar.

Obama's habit may not have been a secret to Illinois voters -- he fessed up to smoking during his 2004 Senate campaign -- but it came as a shock nationally when he announced he was quitting. People may not have thought twice about FDR puffing away, but news of Obama lighting up -- well, you'd have thought he'd admitted to pedophilia. (In fact, according to research at Northwestern University, pedophilia, obesity and smoking are seen as three socially sanctioned reasons for ostracism.)

"Socially, people look at you like you have three heads," says George Hall, a 50-year smoker who oversees operations at the state Legislative Building, which until last year was one of the last public places where smoking was permitted. Hall says he has long-since quit smoking in public because of the stigma attached.