Drugs sneaked into Ohio prison soaked into the pages of JD Vance’s ‘Hillbilly Elegy’
Vice President JD Vance’s Memoir Used to Smuggle Drugs into Ohio Prison
The memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” by Vice President JD Vance has had a tumultuous journey from being a New York Times bestseller to a controversial topic among Appalachian scholars. However, its latest role is quite unexpected – as a tool for smuggling drugs into an Ohio prison.
30-year-old Austin Siebert from Maumee, southwest of Toledo, was convicted of spraying narcotics on the pages of the book, along with a 2019 GRE Handbook and a separate piece of paper. These items were then shipped to Grafton Correctional Institution under the guise of Amazon orders.
On November 18, US District Judge Donald C. Nugent sentenced Siebert to over a decade in prison for his involvement in the drug trafficking scheme.
During a recorded conversation, Siebert and an inmate at the prison were overheard discussing the shipment. Despite the central theme of “Hillbilly Elegy” focusing on the impact of narcotics addiction on families and society, Siebert seemed unaware or indifferent to this fact.
During the conversation, the inmate asks, “Is it Hillbilly?” to which Siebert initially feigns ignorance before recalling, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s the book, the book I’m reading. (Expletive) romance novel.”
