Los Angeles, CA – George Soros, the multibillionaire investor who helped bankroll three initiatives to change drug laws in California, endorsed the marijuana legalization initiative Monday and plans to make a major financial contribution to the campaign.
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Soros, who invested $3 million in the medical marijuana initiative and two other measures, made his announcement in an opinion piece published online by the Wall Street Journal. “Proposition 19 already is a winner no matter what happens on election day. The mere fact of its being on the ballot has elevated and legitimized public discourse about marijuana and marijuana policy in ways I could not have imagined a year ago,” Soros wrote.
Soros, who runs a hedge fund and founded the Open Society Foundations, has not yet donated to the campaign. But Michael Vachon, an advisor to Soros, said that “he plans to make a significant contribution.”
The initiative was the brainchild of Richard Lee, an Oakland medical marijuana entrepreneur who has spent at least $1.5 million to draft the measure, collect signatures to qualify it for the ballot and pay for a campaign. The wealthy donors who have helped to pay for past efforts to change California’s drug laws had largely stayed out of the campaign until the last few weeks.
Meshugener
If you want to get high, get stoned, act like a tower of poverty and sin. Maybe you think thats your priviledge. I would certainly allow a cancer patient access to Marijuana, but to let the general population toke it up because they dont know how to read or socialize in general makes little sense.
I would pass on legalizing marijuana although I wouldn’t prosecute the finding of a small amount on someones person. This is a problem that needs to be funded and we should indeed make profiting from illegal drug use a very difficult avenue.
I don’t think I’m going to stay up late thinking about this one, but lets keep diligence in the forefront and keep the pot out of our children’s hands.
This is going to bring some people to vote, but only the pot heads!
Something tells me he is on it now
To #2 - What do you mean that you wouldn’t prosecute someone who has been found with Marijuana on their possession? It has been found that use of that drug leads to use of worse drugs. As Mayor Guiliani used to state “one goes after a smaller problem, before it leads to a larger problem”.
Ban milk too. It is a well established fact that Heroin addicts started with milk.
Soros is probably on crack, by the way….pot is to tame for him- I hope his heart muscle bursts.
Time to schlep out the old and tired clichés and arguments.
Why should we have people sitting in jail, children with parents behind bars, spouses raising children alone, all because people enjoy smoking pot?
Think how expensive it is to our society and add all the corruption, and note that pot is easily found anywhere for sale in the USA after decades of ‘stamping out the drugs from our cities”. Why should Mexican mafia get rich? I say leave government out as they have failed and only made the whole drug situation a mess.
And while some graduate from pot to cocaine etc many do not. Every day we all can wake up and choose any med, legal or not legal and klapp our heads with pills and smoke bought legally or illegally. Leave the government out. They can not help anyway. That is one sure and clear fact..
“The initiative was the brainchild of Richard Lee, an Oakland medical marijuana entrepreneur who has spent at least $1.5 million to draft the measure”
Would the NYT’s be so polite if a big-pharma company spent $1.5 million to lobby for the elimination of the FDA so that it could market a drug that they had rejected?
What a bunch of bias tools.
I strongly urge everyone here to actually *READ* the WSJ opinion piece cited in the article before commenting.
Possession of small amounts of marijuana account for more than 40% of all drug arrests. Those are our tax dollars at work. Could we PLEASE get the police to start protecting us rather than abusing their power to go after nonsense like this when they feel like it?
Not to mention that legalizing marijuana would cut off the funding for Mexican gangs at the knees. Study the effects of Prohibition on the strength of the mafia. Yes, we need the government to enforce those laws set in place for our PROTECTION. It should be illegal to market addictive and poisonous substances (like tobacco) to the youth of America, but do you really want the government interfering in ANYTHING more than absolutely necessary?
Putting non-violent pot-heads in jail to be influenced by their neighboring drug peddlers, thieves, and murderers, is not going to result in an improvement in society upon their release. Let’s focus on what matters.
#5 - I am pretty certain that in Colorado, you are allowed a small bag of weed. I wouldn’t endorse this everywhere, but there is no reason to trump our youth up on drug charges when a great majority are doing this activity and getting away with it. Its no different than I would put 18 year old in jail for having a beer under age. But that said, Id keep it on their record, perhaps give a warning and if it continued seek charges later.
he looks stoned in the picture
Yes legalize mary jane and than next year legalize other types of drugs; Slowly but surely legalize all drugs. Get people drugged up so they don’t know what is going on and than vote for the lefty. Legalizing Mary Jane will lead to more car accidents, and victims Even if it takes the drugs out of the trade how long do you think before they create some new drug which everybody needs to try. Soros made billions destroying others. He wants to destroy america by legalizing drugs. People seem to forget
mary jane stays in your system for days. Another thing we have outlaw smoking in most places since it is bad for your health and now you want to legalize marijuana which is worst for your lungs. CAN’T FIGURE THIS OUT; JUST DID PEOPLE DON’T THINK WHEN THE YETZOR HORA IS INVOLVE
This man is the WORST person in America. He is mooching off the land!! Er zul paygirin!
He probably has a piece of the pie, like major connections for trading and dealing. That way, if/when it becomes legal he will make millions and millions. Soros causes all kinds of problems so that he can grow his wealth.
Thank you VIN for that perfectly telling photo above!
That explains his destructive contributions to radical nuts out to destroy this country.
You people are so so shallow minded. What’s the big deal of a little pot, nobody ever died from pot, nobody ever overdosed on pot you take 2 or 3 puffs and your happy for 3 hours and your good to go just like alcohol with much less health risks. No addictive ingredients, no hangovers the next day, no health risks what so ever. On the other hand you have the so called “Legal” drugs that kill people every single day, people overdose every day on Vicodin, Oxycodone, Percocet, Codeine, E.T.C. move over to smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, these are much much worse then pot, causes liver damage, lung cancer and the list goes on and on. My opinion (Even though I don’t smoke pot) “Legalize Weed”
#18 - what’s your issue- “legalize weed?” when was the last time you heard of someone minimizing their portion to 2 puffs? It only starts there.
soros is an active anti israel anti semitic jew.he uses his money to support arabs and many anti israel causes.he supports npr.he conned other rich people into supporting american air.which promptly went bankrupt and so he threw more money into it and drew more mony from other weathy folk for a radio station that nobody listened to.i mean who want to listen to liberal lies.i believe american air holds the record for going bankrupt and being resurected.a hungarian friend of mine told me soros means dry in hungarian.how apt.
you can say he’s a jew hater but you can’t say he’s stupid.he’s jumping on a bandwagon thats already popular.somthing like adolf promising volkswagons to all the germans in 39′.