If Democrat rising star Barack Obama decides to run for president in 2008, some observers say that his admission of past drug use -- including cocaine -- could become a campaign issue, the Washington Post reported Jan. 3.

In "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," a memoir written by Obama more than a decade ago, the Illinois junior Senator said he used drugs in high school and college. "Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man," wrote Obama. "I got high [to] push questions of who I was out of my mind."

"Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though," said Obama, 45, who said he needed to be honest so that "young people who are already in circumstances that are far more difficult than mine to know that you can make mistakes and still recover."

Obama's frankness contrasts with the approach of former President Bill Clinton and other public figures tripped up by their drug-using past. "I believe what the country is looking for is someone who is open, honest and candid about themselves rather than someone who seems endlessly driven by polls or focus groups," said spokesperson Robert Gibbs.

Obama recently wrote a policy-oriented book, but the 1996 memoir, penned before he became deeply involved in politics, is far more personal. "This is not the kind of book you would ever expect a politician to write," said Republican political consultant Alex Vogel. "Anyone who has a career in politics has to be concerned with what's in their past, but there is no question that Americans have an appetite for redemption."

A veteran GOP strategist said that the book contains no "disqualifiers" for Obama, and noted that many Baby Boomers -- especially liberals likely to vote in Democratic primaries -- don't have big problems with candidates whose past included marijuana use.

Obama also deals extensively with racial issues in the book, writing, "We were always playing on the white man's court . . . by the white man's rules. If the principal, or the coach, or a teacher ... wanted to spit in your face, he could, because he had the power and you didn't ... The only thing you could choose was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage. And the final irony: should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors ... they would have a name for that too. Paranoid. Militant."