cannabisnews.com: Two Allies Fund a Growing War on the War on Drugs





Two Allies Fund a Growing War on the War on Drugs
Posted by FoM on May 30, 2001 at 12:16:56 PT
By David Bank, The Wall Street Journal
Source: Wall Street Journal
As the pendulum on drug policy swings away from harsher penalties and toward expanded treatment programs, it is getting a big shove from an unusual trio of rich men: billionaires George Soros and Peter Lewis and centimillionaire John Sperling. Opposed to locking up nonviolent drug users, the three have financed a string of state-ballot-box victories in what until recently seemed an unpromising crusade -- getting softer on the possession of marijuana and other illegal drugs. Now, after a breakthrough win last November in California, they are moving to expand their war on the war on drugs by backing new initiatives elsewhere under the banner of "treatment not jail." 
Next month, the three men are expected to approve a multimillion-dollar plan to mount ballot-initiative campaigns in 2002 in the politically crucial states of Florida, Ohio and Michigan. The ballot measures are modeled on California's Proposition 36, which last fall produced a voter mandate to prevent state judges from sending people to prison after their first or second conviction for drug use or possession. Instead, those nonviolent offenders will be directed into treatment programs. Since 1996, when the wealthy trio decided to make reining in the drug war a joint cause, they have spent more than $20 million on a state-by-state campaign to chip away at the hard-line policies of the past 15 years. The money has built a formidable political machine that has already won ballot fights in nine states, including Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and California. Most of the initiatives so far have focused on two narrow issues: allowing the medical use of marijuana and curbing police authority to seize money and property from alleged drug criminals before conviction. Last year's California victory, and one in 1996 in Arizona, made deeper changes in the legal system. For the last two decades, California has led the nation in locking up people convicted of drug offenses. In 1999, its drug-incarceration rate stood at 134 for every 100,000 residents -- 60 percent higher than New York's rate and twice that of Texas. But Proposition 36 -- approved 61 percent to 38 percent, and set to take effect July 1 -- is expected to keep as many as 36,000 new convicts and parole violators out of California prisons each year. The funders' political operatives say their private polling tells them initiatives pushing treatment instead of jail can win in all three of the states they are targeting next year. The well-heeled activists are trying to prove that nationwide, "the public is ahead of the politicians" on drug policy, as Mr. Soros's chief adviser on the issue, Ethan Nadelmann, puts it. How far ahead even Mr. Nadelmann hesitates to guess. Still, after two decades in which drug abuse was generally met with tougher law enforcement, the debate seems to be swinging toward curbing extreme punishment and identifying effective means of treatment. When President Bush earlier this month nominated as his drug czar the hawkish John P. Walters, he strikingly used the occasion to stress his plan to expand treatment programs, even while reiterating his support for jail time for drug offenders. "We've got to make sure that those who are hooked on drugs are treated," Mr. Bush said after the announcement. Positions long considered untouchable by politicians are suddenly part of the mainstream debate. New York's Republican governor, George Pataki, in January proposed moderating his state's severe drug-sentencing laws. That prompted Democratic state legislators to push for more-aggressive reductions, and compromise legislation is expected to win approval. In New Mexico, GOP Gov. Gary Johnson is pressing a long-shot campaign for the legalization of marijuana. And Hawaii last year became the first state in which lawmakers, rather than voters, approved the medical use of marijuana. The United States Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that the federal prohibition on marijuana doesn't have an exception for medicinal use, but the ruling won't necessarily block states from allowing such use. States and localities, not federal authorities, do the vast majority of drug-law enforcement. The troika's political operatives have targeted their initiative campaigns cautiously. So far, they are steering clear of legalization initiatives, even of marijuana. They note that polls going back to the 1970s show the public is about evenly divided over whether marijuana use should be punished criminally, with support for such punishment rising slightly in recent years. Last year, the trio opted not to back a ballot measure pushed by local pro-marijuana activists in Alaska that would have effectively legalized the drug there. The initiative failed. Ten states, including California, have decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana, treating the offense as an infraction punishable by a small fine. While there isn't a popular groundswell for broader legalization, there is evidence of growing unease about the way the war on drugs has been fought. A nationwide poll released last month by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, for example, found that a 52 percent-to-35 percent majority of adults believe drug use should be treated as a "disease," not a crime. "The public has a very different view of first- or second-time users versus habitual users -- and especially versus dealers," asserts Bill Zimmerman, the California political consultant who has run most of the group's campaigns. "Voters see themselves and their family members and friends as being potentially in this category." Even foes of the trio's campaign concede it is adroitly capitalizing on public uncertainty. Many of the initiatives "would never have made it to the ballot without their funding," says Herbert Kleber, director of the substance-abuse division of Columbia University's medical school, who considers the threat of punishment a crucial ingredient of effective treatment. "I can't think of another situation where a few individuals have so dominated and changed the nature of a debate." Mr. Soros, a 70-year-old financier whose fortune is estimated by Forbes magazine at $5 billion, began in the early 1990s to support organizations trying to change United States drug laws. In 1994, Mr. Nadelmann, a former assistant professor of public policy at Princeton University, started advising Mr. Soros on the topic and now heads the Lindesmith Center/Drug Policy Foundation, a spinoff from Mr. Soros's main foundation in New York. Complete Title: Counterattack: Soros, Two Rich Allies Fund a Growing War on the War on DrugsSource: Wall Street Journal (US)Author: David Bank, The Wall Street JournalPublished: Wednesday, May 30, 2001 Copyright: 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.Website: http://www.wsj.com/Contact: letter.editor wsj.comRelated Articles & Web Site:TLC - DPFhttp://www.lindesmith.org/Pot's U.S. Poster Boy http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9905.shtmlGeorge Soros - Salon.comhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9164.shtmlCannabisNews Articles - Proposition 36http://cannabisnews.com/thcgi/search.pl?K=proposition+36
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Comment #8 posted by arcturus on May 31, 2001 at 00:55:57 PT
Yes, but!
We've all acknowledged the scary trend of "treatment." I find this particular bit of news to be especially frightening. These guys are our most powerful allies and now they're on the treatment bandwagon. This is a civil rights issue. If we've got the Soros clan and the let's-use-the-treatment-word-to-keep-(some)drugs-illegal government on the same side of the fence, we'll be set back another decade. Medical marijuana was and is extrememly important because there are suffering people involved. However, it diverted the attention from the real issue which is all adults have the right to smoke marijuana, whether they have a reason to or not. Observer points it out in almost every post, this is an issue of prison. Kap makes the point with jailrape frequently. "Treatment" is just a different shade of the same color: oppression.
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Comment #7 posted by kaptinemo on May 30, 2001 at 17:24:41 PT:
By their works, ye shall know them
Sudaca brings up an interesting point: why is it that the antis never mention the name of Soro's organization?Because the very words Open Society Institute jams in their craws like sand.The very name implies something. Namely, that society at present is not open. Which in turn implies something else.That a society that is not open...is not free.The name of the organization is a rebuke, a slap in the face of every blowhard, jingoist, DrugWar-favoring pol and every truncheon-wielding, tear-gassing, skull-cracking, child-murdering minion of the status quo. The kind of people who would gladly stomp you into the pavement for hinting at the possibility that the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave"...is anything but. Think about it: right this minute, if I were to spell out a string of words such as a terrorist might use in planning something nasty, ECHELON will pick it up, and CARNIVORE will be applied to my ISP servers to find out where I am. Am I free to say what I want?If I have cancer, and am undergoing chemo, and want to use cannabis to stem the nausea, and don't live in a State that acknowledges my right to use anything that may sustain me in my struggle to live, am I free to use it? Without the threat of Darth Vader wannabes crashing down my door and shooting me for not complying with their barked orders fast enough?You know the answer. And so do they. And anything that even remotely suggests that their much vaunted "free country" is little more than a Potemkin Village really gets their goat.That's why what The Three Wise Men are doing is so important. This society of ours, despite it's shining facade, is actually afflicted with some very dangerous lesions and wounds in need of attendance. But the pols and their allies have taken to either refusing to see these for what they are...or, in the absolute height of insanity, have proclaimed them as being somehow normal.The 3 Wise Men are pointing out where the running sores of society are, not to exploit them but to heal them.But if you make your living by lacerations and infection, you've little patience for medics.
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Comment #6 posted by Sudaca on May 30, 2001 at 16:27:50 PT
tres hurras por sr. Soros y Cia
as Dr. Russo says, the catalysts. Help push along the snowball. I always wonder why all the press surrounding Soros in particular never mentions his foundation and its aims.No, its not the drug legalization foundation for drug kingpins; it's the open society institute, dedicated to promoting 'Open Society' as envisioned by philosopher Karl Popper. Hardly the darth vader of morality that the czars paint him to be. I always see references to Soros as the guy who bankrolls the legalizers who want your kids to by LSD and inject it in their eyeballs.here's a little piece on what the OSI does:"The Open Society Institute was established in 1993 to promote the development and maintenance of open societies around the world. OSI does this by supporting an array of activities dealing with educational, social, legal, and health care reform, and by encouraging alternative approaches to complex and controversial issues. Based in New York City, OSI is a private operating and grantmaking foundation. OSI's activities include network programs, U.S. programs, and other initiatives. OSI assists the other organizations in the Soros foundations network by providing administrative, financial, and technical support. Network programs administered by OSI include the Children and Youth Programs, which provide young people with a variety of opportunities and resources; the Economic and Business Development Program, which assists small-business entrepreneurs; the English Language Programs, which support English language instruction and the introduction of modern pedagogy; the Internet Program, which supports projects that develop e-mail and Internet services; the Public Health Programs, which help improve health care in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union; the Scholarship Programs, which provide academic exchange opportunities for students, scholars, and professionals from Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Mongolia, and Burma; the Science Journals Donation Program, which enables libraries in the former Soviet Union to obtain up-to-date science journals; and the Women's Program, initiated to support the national foundations in dealing with women's issues. A number of other network programs are based in Hungary, at the Open Society Institute - Budapest. Certain programs are administered from both New York and Budapest. Programs that focus on the United States include the Center on Crime, Communities & Culture, which seeks and supports effective and humane responses to crime; drug policy reform efforts, including support for The Lindesmith Center, a drug policy research and education center; the Fellowship Programs, including Individual Project Fellowships for work promoting open society and Community Fellowships for projects to meet the needs of underserved communities; the program on Governance and Public Policy, which works to strengthen the institutions of representative democracy; Medicine as a Profession, a program working to counter the influence of money in health care; OSI - Baltimore, which focuses on critical national urban issues as they are expressed locally in the city of Baltimore; the Program on Law & Society, which seeks to improve the values and performance of the legal profession and the civil justice system; the Project on Death in America, which supports alternative approaches to the care of the dying; Reproductive Health and Rights, which promotes the development of policies and practices to protect women's comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights; the Soros Documentary Fund, which supports films and videos in the U.S. and internationally dealing with significant contemporary human rights, social justice, civil liberties, and freedom of expression issues; and Youth Initiatives, which promote critical thinking skills, self-expression, creativity, civic engagement, and leadership among low-income, disadvantaged youth. Other programs based in New York are the Central Eurasia Project and the Burma Project. Finally, OSI also makes funds available to a variety of cultural, educational, and civic institutions and human rights groups. In 1999, a total of $10,512,000 was provided to such groups through Chairman and Presidential Grants. Among the major grants were: $500,000 to the Goree Institute in Senegal to support civil society and independent media capacity in Africa; $450,000 to the International Women's Health Coalition to support projects that protect women's sexual and reproductive health and rights; $250,000 to Economic Cooperation Foundation to promote peace in the Middle East; $100,000 to Physicians for Human Rights for general support; $231,000 to Doctors of the World for general support; $200,000 to Refugees International for monitoring and advocacy concerning global refugee crises; $166,667 to the Committee to Protect Journalists emergency response fund; and $250,000 for a range of activities to the Foundation on InterEthnic Relations. The Institute also provided $26,850,024 to the Iris Foundation for the benefit of Bard College. "
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Comment #5 posted by Ben Cohn on May 30, 2001 at 16:06:51 PT:
Lack of math skills at WSJ
Seems like they don't require any basic science or math knowledge of their "journalists" over at WSJ, which is peculiar for a publication so focused on economic reporting."... it is getting a big shove from an unusual trio of rich men: billionaires George Soros and Peter Lewis and centimillionaire John Sperling. "Well, John Sperling is surely at least a centimillionaire, but so what?. Centi is the prefix meaning "one hundredth of", as in centimeter. One hundredth of a million dollars is $10,000, which most of us, at one point or another in our lives, have in our possession.What I think the author either meant is that Lewis is a hectomillionaire (meaning he has at least one hundred million), or possibly that he is a centibillionaire (meaning he has at least a hundredth of a billion, or 10 million.) Since I get the picture that Lewis is wealthier than your "average" multimillionaire, I'm guessing he's in the 9 figure range.Kids, let this be a lesson to you: Lack of dope smoking will rot your mind, and lead to a worthless future, maybe even writing for the (ugh) Wall Street Urinal.PeaceBC
Metric Prefixes for ignorant reporters
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Comment #4 posted by Monvor on May 30, 2001 at 14:50:52 PT
The Fight for Florida
My deepest gratitude for folk heroes, George Soros, Peter Lewis and John Sperling! Bring the fight to Florida! Your troops await! At every ballot box we will vote AGAINST this insane, dirty-money Drug War.Bring the fight to Florida, the Bush cartel must topple!Lets send this message to the children, democracy does work!
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on May 30, 2001 at 14:43:16 PT
Expanded Wall Street Journal Article
Threesome Fund Growing War On The War On Drugs http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9908.shtml
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Comment #2 posted by tdm on May 30, 2001 at 13:58:45 PT:
tax dollars fund a growing war on some drugs
"Since 1996, when the wealthy trio decided to make reining in the drug war a joint cause, they have spent more than $20 million on a state-by-state campaign to chip away at the hard-line policies of the past 15 years."And how much money in the form of tax dollars has the federal gov't spent on maintaining the status quo in the same time period -- the status quo of restricting liberty at every opportunity in the fraudulent name of protection? Are we to understand that the only relevant or legitimate efforts at persuading the public on matters of public policy come from the federal government itself, using money taken from us by force? Surely this article is a joke. Only satire could turn reason on its head in this manner.
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Comment #1 posted by Ethan Russo, MD on May 30, 2001 at 12:55:55 PT:
Catalysts, Not the Cause
These gentlemen are catalysts of the revolution in drug policy reform. They did not make it happen; rather, they helped create a situation in which it could happen. The rest was a product of the voters. In other words, these policies make sense to the public, and that is why they became law. I suspect that even the financial and political backers of these measures would admit that they did not have to change many minds. Those minds had already decided on the wisdom of new approaches.What is astounding in that the deaf and blind (but unfortunately not silent) politicians refuse to accept this, and rather have chosen to vilify the reformist troika. These men will be acknowledged as heroes some day.
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