George Soros is supporting California’s Proposition 19 to legalize marijuana.
Suuuure it’s for glaucoma, you randy old geezer.
George Soros, the progressive billionaire who’s fond of funding left-wing watchdog organizations, causing the right wing to writhe with indignation, makes a compelling argument in the “Wall Street Journal” today for legalizing marijuana: prohibiting it is racist.
As perhaps the only figure more deeply loathed by hardcore conservatives than Hillary Clinton, one can only imagine the ire it will raise with right-wingers to propose legalizing weed as some kind of affirmative action, race-equality issue—but Soros does make some interesting points:
Racial prejudice… helps explain the origins of marijuana prohibition. When California and other U.S. states first decided (between 1915 and 1933) to criminalize marijuana, the principal motivations were not grounded in science or public health but rather in prejudice and discrimination against immigrants from Mexico who reputedly smoked the “killer weed.”
Soros continues to point out that while “African-Americans are no more likely than other Americans to use marijuana… they are three, five or even 10 times more likely—depending on the city—to be arrested for possessing marijuana.”
And this doesn’t even include the staggering statistic that in 2002, 10.4% of black men between the age of 25 and 29 were incarcerated. How much of that devastating number can be attributed marijuana isn’t exactly clear.
He hasn’t donated money to the cause yet, like Sean Parker of Facebook and “The Social Network” fame, who donated 100,000 to the cause of passing Prop 19. But with this this piece for WSJ, Soros joins a chorus of mostly liberal voices who have ” legitimized public discourse about marijuana and marijuana policy,” as he writes.
For the right, legalizing marijuana presents a catch 22 in which its conservative fiscal values contradict its conservative social values. Conservative Republicans mostly oppose Prop 19, because legalizing drugs doesn’t usually fit into most people’s concept of the “family values” ethos. On the on the other hand, as Soros points out, “regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue.” All of which would go a long way toward putting our financial house in order, which is a value the right likes to claim as their own.
ABC News reports that support for Prop 19 is burning out in California. If voters go for it, it’ll likely be sound arguments like Soros’s that tip the scales, rather than celebrity endorsements and donations from people like Parker.
So what do you think? Should California kick off a repeal of marijuana prohibition? Let us know your thoughts.
