As a candidate, Kennedy got a very sympathetic pass on his years of drug use because he's an addict, having used heroin from ages 15 to 29. He quit when he was arrested after overdosing on a flight from Minneapolis to the Black Hills and found by police in South Dakota to be carrying heroin; he pleaded guilty and received only probation. Kennedy, as Joe Hagan wrote in a recent Vanity Fair profile, "has made his history of addiction part of his campaign narrative."
As a teenager in Nebraska, I'd smoked cannabis and dropped acid before I got to Harvard in 1972. Sometime during my freshman year, I tried cocaine, enjoyed it, and later decided to procure a gram for myself. A friend told me about a kid in our class who was selling coke.
The dealer was Bobby Kennedy. I'd never met him. I got in touch; he said sure, come over to his room in Hurlbut, his dorm, where I'd never been, a five-minute walk. His roommate, whom I knew, was the future journalist Peter Kaplan"with whom I, like Kennedy, remained friends for the rest of his life. He left as I arrived. I wondered whether he always did that when Bobby had customers.
"Hi. Bobby," Kennedy introduced himself. Another kid, tall, lanky, and handsome, was in the room. "This is my brother Joe." That is, Joseph P. Kennedy II, two years older, the future six-term Massachusetts congressman.
Bobby Kennedy wasn't famous, but he was the most famous person I'd ever met.
He poured out a line for me to sample, and handed me an inch-and-a-half length of plastic drinking straw. I snorted. We chatted for a minute. I paid him, I believe, $40 in cash. It was a lot of money, the equivalent of $300 today. But cocaine bought from a Kennedy accompanied by a Kennedy brother - the moment of glamour seemed worth it.
www.theatlantic.com
Well lookie here: MAGHA - Make Americans Get High Again! Trump's got a new campaign slogan!Shouldn't he want RFK Jr. executed for dealing hard drugs? I'm so confused here, maybe Trump should clarify his stance on how receiving the support of a former drug dealer and perennial forward-failing neer do well is a MAGA move.
