What Are You Going to Do Now That You’ve Lost the Drug War? Blame George Soros!

It’s hard to know where to begin when pointing
out the unintentional comedy shot through this truly awful
Washington Times article, “George
Soros’ real crusade: Legalizing marijuana in the U.S.” How
about this quote from former White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy director John Walters:

Their entire message is built on phony propaganda that has been
far too successful in the mainstream media.

That would be the same John Walters who used your taxpayer
dollars in 2007 to cherry-pick cocaine-price statistics as the
basis for a successful media victory lap touting major progress in
the war on drugs, even though data on the subject that he actively
suppressed showed the
opposite to be true. And yes, the same John Walters who in 2008
made the laugh-out-loud
claim that “Our policy has been a success,” and that “The good
news in drug policy is that we know what works, and that is moral
seriousness.”

In addition to having one of the most
flagrant propagandists in the modern history of government be the
lead witness against alleged pro-legalization propaganda, the Wash
Times lets him carry the article’s main thesis:

“The pro-legalization movement hasn’t come from a groundswell of
the people. A great deal of its funding and fraud has been
perpetrated by George Soros and then promoted by celebrities,” said
[Walters]. “The truth is under attack, and it’s an absolutely
dangerous direction for this country to be going in.”

The truth has been under attack from prohibitionist blowhards
like John Walters for so long that they’ve forgotten
how to win an argument on the merits, if they in fact ever
knew. For instance, arguably the biggest moment in the modern
acceleration toward legalization came in 2010, when an Oakland
dispensary owner named Richard Lee fought like hell to get on the
California ballot the full-legalization measure Prop. 19. Over
the initial wishes of just about every established marijuana policy
group. As I
wrote just after that election:

Legalization groups initially tried to talk Lee out of it,
warning him that the state wasn’t ready for so radical a step.
Major drug policy donors such as George Soros and Peter Lewis came
through with money only in the last weeks of the campaign.
Attending the annual conference of the National Organization for
the Reform of Marijuana Laws in September, I was stunned that a
fair amount of the conference’s time was dedicated to convincing a
room full of pot advocates that Prop. 19 was a good thing.

Even though the initiative lost, it tapped into
a—yes!—groundswell of public support for leapfrogging over the
traditional medical marijuana half-measures that the likes of Soros
and Lewis had been funding for two decades. Now, a shocking

54 percent of Americans favor legalization, 69 percent believe
that—contra prohibitionist propaganda—pot is less dangerous than
alcohol, and 75 percent think weed will eventually be legal. It’s a
mighty dim view of your fellow Americans that their opinions can be
swayed by a billionaire slicing off a rounding error of his
fortune. And as Jacob Sullum
noted last year, “if that were true, the federal government,
which has vastly greater resources[…], would not be losing this
argument.”

This is not to say that the billionaire anti-prohibitionists
like Soros and the late Lewis (who the Times sneeringly described
as an “unabashed pot smoker”) did not impact the debate. To the
contrary: By helping fund successful medical marijuana initiatives,
they allowed for a demonstration project that created familiarity
with a previously alien and scary-sounding practice. And as Sullum
has noted, in America,
familiarity breeds tolerance. But that’s considerably different
that pumping propaganda into zombie like vessels who dutifully
change their minds.

Because this is the Washington Times, we are also treated to
this delightfully ignorant even-The-New-Republic
line: 

Even Mr. Obama’s drug czar said the legalization of marijuana is
dangerous.

Do
tell.

This might be my favorite section of the article:

Although these organizations appear on the surface to have no
affiliation, closer examination shows all are linked through their
personnel and cross-promotion.

Drug Policy Alliance President Ira Glasser is a former executive
director of the ACLU. Marijuana Policy Project co-founders Rob
Kampia, Chuck Thomas and Mike Kirshner originally worked at the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which hosts
industry conferences attended and promoted by Drug Policy Alliance
staff, and has a political action committee that donates to
marijuana advocacy candidates.

The Marijuana Policy Project’s co-founders also frequently speak
at events sponsored by the Drug Policy Alliance. The National
Cannabis Industry Association — known as the chamber of commerce
for marijuana — was co-founded by Aaron Smith, who previously
worked at Safe Access Now, another Soros-backed nonprofit that
promotes the legalization of pot.

Why, it’s almost as if people who share the same
interests sometimes collaborate!

Author Kelly Riddell ends on what she must think is a profound
point:

Tom Angell, founder and chairman of the Marijuana Majority, an
advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. “We now have 20 states
plus the District of Columbia with medical marijuana laws, two
states have already legalized it for all adults over the age of 21
— politicians will have to follow the will of the people on
this.”

Or follow Mr. Soros’ money. Mr. Angell’s group is funded, in
part, by a grant from the Drug Policy Alliance.

Here is a thing to understand about political money, and Soros’
in particular: When given to federal candidates and political
parties, it is almost completely
useless in moving the needle on your pet policy reform. Soros
(and Lewis, and anti-prohibition backer John Sperling) got so
heavily into national politics in 2004 that they drew their very
own
Jane Mayer article in The New Yorker. Did the
politicians they eventually helped elect turn out to be worth a
damn on drug reform? Not a bit. It is only since “the will of the
people” has moved so sharply, so seemingly irreversibly, that a
small handful of politicians have begun to get out of the way of
rolling back one of the worst policy catastrophes in modern
American history.

It is indeed sad for prohibitionists that they are having a hard
time raising money, and that the scores of billions of dollars that
the U.S. government has spent on pumping ridiculous propaganda into
the minds of taxpayers has utterly failed to convince them of
things that aren’t remotely true. For decades, they had the law,
the money, and the guns all on their side. No wonder they want to
blame George Soros: It’s a hell of a lot more comforting than
looking in the mirror.