The Book of Joe, by Jeff Wilser: on Drugs

Joe Biden: Never touched beer, alcohol, cigarettes, or pot

The reason? As a kid, he had noticed that his uncle Boo-Boo drank too much, and he wanted to avoid the same fate. "There are enough alcoholics in my family," he said in 2008. In college Biden was always the designated driver, making him the darling of the parents.

Biden had the same policy with cigarettes and pot. (In college, he once stopped dating a woman because she smoked--deal breaker.) "I don't use anything that could be a crutch," he told a reporter in 1970. "I use football as a crutch and motorcycle jumping and skiing--I ski like a madman. But those are crutches over which I have some control. I'm against chemical crutches.