--- title: "Top JD Vance Advisor Secretly Posted About Being a Drug Fiend" description: "JD Vance advisor Aaron Kofsky, who has helped write deregulatory crypto policies, posted prolifically about doing and smuggling hard drugs." date: "2024-10-18" modified: "2024-10-18" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/top-vance-advisor-drugs" categories: - "Future Society" tags: - "2024 election" - "jd vance" - "politics" --- # Top JD Vance Advisor Secretly Posted About Being a Drug Fiend ![JD Vance advisor Aaron Kofsky, who has helped write deregulatory crypto policies, posted prolifically about doing and smuggling hard drugs.]() *\Image: Jared C. Tilton via Getty\* Watch what you post online, kids. As [*Wired* reports](), Aaron Kofsky, a top financial policy advisor to Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, used to post online about his love for various drugs — cocaine, oxycodone, MDMA, and kratom, among many others — tips for how to smuggle said drugs through airport security, and even suggested that "half of Congress" probably "rails lines." In addition to advising Vance on financial policies related to [cryptocurrencies]() and banking regulations, Kofsky has held roles at the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee and as an advisor to former Securities and Exchange Commissioner Mark Uyeda. He also advised former Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey. Yet, as *Wired* reports, Kofsky has meanwhile spent his time in Washington posting prolifically in multiple drug-happy Reddit forums under the handle @PsychoticMammal, with his 11-year history of posts about loving, doing, and transporting drugs spanning the course of his political career. *Wired* was able to link the account to Kofsky by cross-referencing its unique handle with other accounts across the web. *Wired's* [reporting is significant]() in part because of Vance's hardline stance against drugs, and Kofsky's reported role in helping "Vance flesh out his opposition to some cryptocurrency regulation," [as *Politico* reported earlier this year](). In one particularly egregious post dating back to May 2022, PsychoticMammal took to the r/Cocaine subreddit to suggest that users looking to ferry cocaine through airports might try "putting a bag in between pages of a book or in your wallet." "I've never had an issue," PsychoticMammal noted of their method. According to *Wired*, Kofsky would have been advising Toomey at the time. That same month, the account wrote that "coke then opiates is always my go-to." More recently, in January of this year, PsychoticMammal took to Reddit to disparage Vance, calling him a "Trump boot licker" in a since-deleted post to the forum r/ObscureDrugs while discussing a video of the Ohio senator questioning a former Drug Enforcement Administration official about the synthetic class of opioids known as nitazenes. (The video was posted *by PsychoticMammal*, who shared the clip — in which Kofsky is clearly visible in the background — to multiple subreddits.) "I just can't believe that this Trump boot licker Vance is ahead of the curve here," the user wrote, as quoted by *Wired*. In a statement to *Wired*, Kofsky acknowledged the posts, writing that "like millions of Americans" he's "struggled with drug use," a compulsion he attributed to a personal battle with epilepsy. "I deeply regret posting these comments," he added. "I'm not proud of this and I'm embarrassed it's being publicized in this way, but I am thankful to say that part of my life is behind me." **More on crypto and the 2024 election:** [*Trump's New Crypto Project Is a Type Linked to Organized Crime and Terrorism*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()