My drug dealer, RFK Jr.

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The leading third-party presidential candidate – an environmental lawyer and activist, the son and nephew of legendary liberal Democratic politicians – has just announced his retirement and joined the campaign of the most anti-environmental president and presidential candidate in recent history, the leader of a Republican Party that he has transformed into a right-wing, anti-democratic, proto-fascist personality cult.

I could go on forever listing the contradictions and denials of principles. It's just mind-boggling.

But Donald Trump and Bobby Kennedy—as I have called Robert F. Kennedy Jr. since our freshman year at Harvard—have always had much in common. Both are spoiled playboy sons from wealthy northeastern countries; both (to paraphrase Michelle Obama) “were granted the grace of failure” as misbehaving, underachieving youths who got into Ivy League colleges thanks to “the positive discrimination of generational wealth”; both were lifelong reckless adolescents, both attention-seeking womanizers and liars, both buffoons. And Kennedy’s hour-long speech today was almost as aimless and full of lies as any average Trump hour.

On the subject of the entitlement sense of reckless youth, I have an anecdote to share about Bobby Kennedy. But it is actually relevant to his support of Donald Trump for president and his apparent expectation of joining a second Trump administration.

In his speech today, Kennedy spoke at length about federal drug regulation and chronic disease treatment programs. “I'm going to change that,” he said, pledging to “staff” health agencies very differently. “Within four years, America will be a healthy country… if President Trump is elected and keeps his word.” Trump, he added, “has told me he wants that to be his legacy.”

My Bobby Kennedy story is about pharmaceuticals—not legal, life-saving drugs like the vaccines Kennedy lied about professionally, but recreational drugs.

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As a candidate, Kennedy was forgiven for his years of drug use with much understanding, as he himself is an addict and used heroin from the age of 15 to 29. He quit when he was arrested after an overdose on a flight from Minneapolis to the Black Hills and police in South Dakota found him carrying heroin; he pleaded guilty and received only probation. Kennedy, as Joe Hagan wrote in a recent article, Vanity Fair Profile, “has made his addiction story a part of his campaign story.”

I had smoked cannabis and taken LSD as a teenager in Nebraska before I got to Harvard in 1972. At some point in my freshman year I tried cocaine, liked it, and later decided to get a gram for myself. A friend told me about a boy in our class who sold coke.

The dealer was Bobby Kennedy. I had never met him. I contacted him; he said, sure, come over to his room in Hurlbut, his dorm, which I had never been to, a five-minute walk. His roommate, who I knew, was future journalist Peter Kaplan – who, like Kennedy, I remained friends with for the rest of his life. He was leaving when I arrived. I wondered if he always did that when Bobby had clients.

“Hi, Bobby,” Kennedy introduced himself. Another tall, lanky, handsome boy was in the room. “This is my brother Joe.” That is Joseph P. Kennedy II, two years older and a future six-term congressman from Massachusetts.

Bobby Kennedy wasn't famous, but he was the most famous person I've ever met.

He poured me a line to try and handed me a 1.5-inch plastic straw. I snorted. We chatted for a minute. I think I paid him $40 in cash. That was a lot of money, the equivalent of $300 today. But cocaine bought from a kennedy accompanied by a Kennedy brother– the glamorous moment seemed worth it.

Ten minutes later, when I returned to my dorm room, I received a call.

“Hello?”
“It's me, Bobby.”
“Hello.”
“You have my straw!”
I realized I had actually done that and thought nothing of it. Because… it was a crappy piece of plastic straw. But Bobby was pissed.
“There are Crystals inside, man, Cultivation. You took It.”
Cultivation? The residue of the cocaine powder mixed with mucus and formed Crystals over time? What did I know? It reminded me of a science fair project.
“So… do you want the straw back?”
“YesMan.”
I took it back to his room. He didn't smile or say thank you. It was the last time I ever bought Coke from anyone.

A famous rich boy who sold a hard drug that could have killed him – or more precisely, someone who was not him– a year-long prison sentence. His almost fetishistic obsession with a piece of plastic waste. His greedy little temper tantrums disguised as righteousness. His belief that he was growing valuable cocaine crystals. Looking back, it seemed to me a tiny illustration of the child father of the man he became: a fantastic pseudo-scientific crusader, a dapper middle-aged buffoon taking selfies with barbecued dogs and playing pranks on roadkill bear cubs he didn't have time to eat.

The reason I finally decided to tell this anecdote is because of the criminal justice policies promoted by the presidential candidate he just supported. This is another of the many spectacular contradictions I mentioned earlier.

That is, Donald Trump, when he becomes president, wants to start executing drug traffickers, as Kennedy is doing now. He said this in a speech as president in 2018: “These are terrible people, and we have to get tough on these people, because … if we don’t get tough on the drug traffickers, we’re wasting our time … And that toughness includes the death penalty … We will solve this problem… We will solve it with rigor… That is what they fear most.”

He said it again in 2022 when he announced his current candidacy: “We will ask [Congress to pass a law that] anyone who sells drugs will be caught selling drugs [is] to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.”

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And at a campaign rally last April, he detailed his plan to kill drug traffickers: “The only thing they understand is strength. They understand strength – and that will all stop.” Our policy, he explained, should be like that in the country he otherwise demonizes the most. “When I met Chinese President Xi, I asked, 'Do you have a drug problem?' 'No, no, no.' [he said,] “We don’t have a drug problem.” [I said,] “Why is that?” “Quick trial!” I said. “Tell me about a quick trial.” When they catch the drug seller, the drug trafficker, the drug dealer, they give them a trial immediately. That takes a day. One day. If at the end of that day they are guilty of what they always are… within a day that person is executed. They execute the drug dealers. They have zero drug problems. Zero.”

So a question reporters might ask new Trump campaigner and potential Trump administration official Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is something like this: The candidate you are campaigning for and in whose administration you apparently want to serve wants to rewrite our laws to make drug traffickers, especially those who sell narcotics, subject to the death penalty. Given that you sold cocaine in your youth, how do you feel about his support for a regime that might have led to your own execution at age 19?

Editor's note: The Kennedy team did not respond to requests for comment on this story.