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"La cucaracha, la cucaracha,
ya no puede caminar.
Porque no tiene, porque le falta,
marijuana que fumar."

It is known that Louis Armstrong admitted to smoking pot daily.

THANKS! I couldn't remember the verse. Humm..."que fumar" not "por fumar." Hummm...

I don't condemn anyone, least of all Louis Armstrong, for smoking pot. THAT is not the point of my issue with drug use. BTW, "it is known" by whom?

The lyrics were often changed in the U.S. to:
"limonada que tomar."

BTW, "it is known" by whom?

Here's an excerpt, this one not by Armstrong, but by Laurence Bergreen, author of "Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life," published by Broadway Books.

IMON: I do have to ask you about a devotion in the life of Louis Armstrong, marijuana? I guess from a fairly early age he probably had it every day of his life. He believed in it.

BERGREEN: Yes, he did. This is one of the more difficult things about him to understand. He always -- often said that he was old enough to remember when booze was illegal and pot was legal because of course he came of age in the Prohibition era in the 1920s. And the idea was -- and he was not wholly mistaken at that time -- that it was healthy. Well, it was healthier than toxic moonshine, which was making other jazz musicians sick and even killing them. And he felt that it relaxed him a lot. So even though he got into trouble with the law a few years later for possession of marijuana, he continued to use it in very heavy quantities, you know, three cigar-sized joints a day, at least, throughout his life. Now, this did have a long-term harmful effect. I think if you talk to a doctor, they'll tell you that that amount of heavy, chronic marijuana use will have a bad effect on your lungs, for starters, and Louis did indeed suffer lung problems in his last -- later years, and couldn't blow for a long period as a result.

I would wager in modern lingo, "three cigar-sized joints" would be considered "blunts". He was also apparently arrested for possession in 1930. You'll probably find an interview where he talks about it himself. I recall reading an interview with him, but haven't located it yet.