I’m sure when JD Vance was writing his best seller “Hill Billy Elegy,” he was not expecting it to be used like this! A new report by authorities in Ohio has revealed a man used Vance’s memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” to smuggle drugs into prison. The move by the drug smuggler is quite shocking considering in Vance’s book he talks about how drugs wreaked havoc on his family. Drugs sneaked into Ohio prison soaked into the pages of JD Vance’s ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ https://t.co/ahRB9z8l5C pic.twitter.com/1o4B3PguxP — New York Post (@nypost) November 25, 2025 CBS News reported more details on “Hill Billy Elegy” being used to smuggle drugs into prison: Vice President JD Vance’s memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” has a storied history as a New York Times bestseller, as the then-31-year-old’s introduction to the nation as a “Trump whisperer,” as a divisive subject among Appalachian scholars and, eventually, as a Ron Howard-directed movie. Its latest role? Secretly transporting drugs into an Ohio prison. The book was one of three items whose pages 30-year-old Austin Siebert, of Maumee, southwest of Toledo, has been convicted of spraying with narcotics and then shipping to Grafton Correctional Institution disguised as Amazon orders. The others were a 2019 GRE Handbook and a separate piece of paper, according to court documents. On Nov. 18, U.S. District Judge Donald C. Nugent sentenced Siebert to more than a decade in prison for his role in the drug trafficking scheme. Siebert and an inmate at the prison were caught in a recorded conversation discussing the shipment. He either didn’t know or didn’t care that a central theme of “Hillbilly Elegy” is the impact of narcotics addiction on Vance’s family and the broader culture. “Is it Hillbilly?” the inmate asks. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Siebert replies, momentarily confused. Then, suddenly remembering, he says, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s the book, the book I’m reading. (Expletive) romance novel.” Charlie Kirk was a fan of the book. Take a look: Hillbilly Elegy has sold 600,000 copies in the last 10 days. The film has been a Top 10 movie on Netflix for 10 days. The more people know JD Vance, the more they like him, and millions of Americans are getting exposed to his story as we speak. — Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 25, 2024 CBS News reported shortly after Trump selected Vance as his running mate sales of Hill Billy Elegy soared: JD Vance published his bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” in 2016, just months before former President Donald Trump won his first presidential campaign. Now, with Trump announcing Vance as his running mate on Monday, the book is back in the news — and at the top of the bestseller lists. Trump’s decision to pick Vance out of a crowd of vice presidential hopefuls has also boosted viewership of the film adaptation of “Hillbilly Elegy,” with streams of the Ron Howard-directed 2020 movie surging 1,180% on July 15, according to research firm Luminate. As of Wednesday morning, the film was ranked as the fourth-most streamed show on Netflix. Viewers watched the film for a combined 19.2 million minutes on Monday, the day Vance was picked as Trump’s running mate, compared with 1.5 million minutes on the prior day, Luminate said. “Hillbilly Elegy” also tops Amazon’s Kindle bestseller list, surging from No. 220 prior to Trump’s announcement. Sales of the book now total at least 1.6 million copies, according to Circana, which tracks around 85% of hardcover and paperback sales. Vance’s book, which details his roots in rural Kentucky and blue-collar Ohio, was an immediate hit and made him a national celebrity. The memoir became a cultural talking point after Trump’s presidential victory in 2016, with some readers seeking insights from the book about Trump’s appeal to rural voters.