Has Barack Obama taken up smoking again?
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Is the pressure starting to tell on the US president?
Barack Obama informed the world that he had given up smoking in 2011 after 30 years. But a photograph taken unawares by the spokesman of Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi appears to suggest that he has taken up the habit again.
Michelle Obama said he had made it a condition of agreeing to support her husband’s bid for the White House in 2007 that he finally put aside tobacco, but he had apparently initially been unable to fulfill his side of the bargain, reportedly begging aides to supply him a smoke in secret.
Now a photo taken on a balcony on the margins of the G7 meeting in Bavaria shows Obama apparently taking a cigarette from a packet. The picture was posted on Instagram by Renzi’s spokesman Filippo Sensi.
An aide to the president insisted to the Bild newspaper that he had not and did not smoke.