Platner “highly” recommended the drug-fueled experience to other Reddit users.
“No regrets,” he wrote in February 2020.
Platner, who is running to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins, discussed buying cocaine in another post from around the same time. Platner responded to someone who asked about a Coast Guard seizure of 12,000 pounds of cocaine valued at $312 million.
“Street value,” Platner wrote in July 2020. “I always wonder what street you’re buying your cocaine on, because it’s not the street I’m buying my cocaine on.”
Platner’s drug use could also prove a political liability in Maine, the oldest state in the nation in terms of median age. Older Americans typically are more disapproving of drug use compared to their younger counterparts. While there is little public polling on Americans’ views of cocaine and other illicit drugs, just 43 percent of Americans older than 65 approve of recreational marijuana use, compared to 63 percent of Americans between 18 and 29. And unlike marijuana, which is being legalized in multiple states, cocaine remains illegal, and the market is controlled by ruthless drug cartels.
It is unclear if Platner admitted his drug use to the military or if it would have affected his service status. Platner’s posts suggest he took the drug-infused European trip at the end of his first deployment with the Marines, which ended in 2008. After the Marines and a stint at George Washington University, Platner joined the Army in 2011.
No word yet if Platner also scored a few vials of Pervitin as well.