Two years ago, Forbes Magazine claimed that billionaire George Soros had already given $200 million to the cause of marijuana legalization.
After releasing some 2500 damaging emails about George Soros and his policy arm, Open Society Foundation, the Twitter account of WikiLeaks was removed. How can one man have so much power? Is a person who plays chess with the world’s financial markets and social media also a puppeteer who can control the lives of people and political events from above?
In 1992, Soros brought down the British pound and nearly broke the Bank of England, making at least $1 billion on his financial position. During the Asian financial crisis in 1997, it was thought that Soros’ market manipulation contributed to the crisis, crippling the economies of Thailand and Malaysia. One Thai activist described him as “a kind of Dracula. He sucks the blood from the people.” In 2011, his conviction for insider trading in France which he took part in back in 1988, was upheld up by the European High Court.
Soros manipulated the world’s financial markets before trying his hand at control of internal US policy. His first domestic policy interest was to change how we treat illegal drugs. The push to legalize marijuana begun 25-30 years ago, and passing of California’s medical marijuana in 1996 was his first big success. In 2016, the Sacramento Bee reports that a “small number of individuals, corporations and dark money organizations that don’t disclose their donors have paid for the initiative with more than $16 million in donations of $250,000 or more.”1 Soros is chief financier behind Drug Policy Alliance and other changes in US drug policy.
Deception at the Heart of the Legalization Movement
The marijuana lobbying depends on the propagation of myths, such as the idea that marijuana is only illegal because of racism against blacks and Mexicans. Never mind that Mexico made marijuana completely illegal in 1920, and that the United States is bound by several treaties to keep marijuana illegal. Drug Policy Alliance supports the legalization of all drugs.
To get full legalization, the first step was to use medical marijuana as a way in the door, pretending is that medical marijuana is about compassion. (There are videos in which NORML’s leaders admit it’s a gimmick to get full legalization. Putting it to vote allows the maximum deception, because ballots are vague and provide a good way of getting around regulation.)
“Regulate like alcohol” and “eliminate the black market” are some of the rallying cries for legalizing pot. Regulating alcohol doesn’t prevent underage drinking or keep drunk drivers off the road. Why would marijuana be different?
Another big myth the drug lobby fosters is that people get arrest records and go to jail for a one-time mistake. The truth is that they commit other crimes while on drugs and get convicted for “drug possession only” by using plea bargains. Drug Courts and judges have been using the drug treatment option for nearly 20 years, a fact that legalizers omit.
The current message is one of inevitability, despite big losses in states like Vermont and Ohio. However, by saying “inevitable,” the marijuana industry and its financiers can intimidate anyone who might disagree and donate to the other side. It’s David vs. Goliath in terms of money…………….and bullying.
Soros Web of Control through Policy and Funding
As WikiLeaks revealed, Soros influenced Secretary Clinton’s push for the 2011 Panama Free Trade Agreement, which opened up that country as as a tax haven for billionaires, a direct benefit to him.
A book funded by the Soros’ Open Policy Institute, Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, omits critical information about drug courts which give drug addiction treatment as an alternative to jail. The book also doesn’t discuss the plea bargains which allow drug users to serve their sentences for drug crimes in lieu of more serious crimes. The author strategically kept out information which did not help the bias from which the book was written. Like her patron, Michelle Alexander supports the legalization of all drugs. Maia Szalavitz is another pro-legalization writer who is a Soros Fellow.
We are told that George Soros funded the education of ACLU lawyer Alison Holcomb. She wrote Initiative-502 to legalize marijuana in Washington state and met with Gavin Newsom and Sean Parker to discuss Proposition 64. (More on I-502 in part 2)
There’s a group of people who have been supported by Soros and are beholden to him, including Vanita Gupta, currently head of the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department. Despite her intelligence and success as a prosecutor, Gupta doesn’t appear to understand crime and addiction as it relates to drugs. She also supports the legalization of all drugs, She was a recipient of a Soros Fund Fellowship and was supported by the Soros’ Open Society Institute. Perhaps agreement on this issue is a litmus test for getting grants from groups that Soros funds, and getting powerful appointments in government.
Soros gives a great deal of money to the ACLU which has tons of money and funds studies to point out that blacks are arrested for drugs proportionately more frequently than whites. As for Washington, DC, Police Chief Cathy Lanier wrote that the “ACLU misconstrues the District’s data” and “appears not to understand our city well.” Lanier also suggests that police do not target, but have use their responsibility to respond to neighborhood requests.
The ACLU operates by telling people how they’re supposed to be thinking. For minorities, the ACLU’s attitude is patronizing. Giving minorities permission to destroy their brain with drugs is not social justice and civil rights. Furthermore, pretending racism can be solved by marijuana legalization is simplistic thinking at best. Plus it destroys the rights of minorities who choose not to use drugs. The ACLU considers the rights drug users and drug dealers ahead of the rights of others to live in peace.
A similar simplistic approach of Soros/DPA and related groups is to charge that the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) created cartels and drug violence in Mexico. Of course there are always many reasons for any social problem, which in this case includes drug demand and poverty.
Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) has a middle ground with drug policy with more creative problem-solving ideas. There are solutions to the problems of criminal justice which address the dangers of drug use and drug crime, but don’t involve legalization.
As President Obama’s first Director of the ONDCP said, “It’s time for the United States to “acknowledge and come to grips with the link between crime and substance use” and ease the burden on its criminal justice system. (He no longer has the job; is that Soros’ influence?) The way to bring down incarceration is to bring down drug usage, since the vast majority of crimes are committed by people on drugs. The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population but nearly 60% of the world’s drug users. Yet people wonder why the rate of incarceration is high.
Soros’s Influence on Other Groups
Other billionaires and political donors concentrate on a few issues they know well, such as Tom Steyer’s support of environmental causes. (As a Californian, he should learn about marijuana, how it destroys the environment and leaves the problems of smell and secondhand smoke.)
It’s hypocritical when politicians who complain about Citizens’ United and the Koch Brothers don’t mention George Soros. What’s even more ironic is that Soros is far more powerful than the Koch Brothers. He is the most influential of all political donors because of how he spreads donations into the many 527 groups he funds.
Small donors who opposed the Iraq War in 2002 – 2003 contributed to MoveOn.org because of a specific issue, but the organization morphed into something entirely different. After George Soros made a large donation to the group, the organization decided it could control the Democratic Party. In an email signed by MoveOn’s leaders in 2004, they claimed control of the Democratic Party, “Now it’s our Party: we bought it, we own it, and we’re going to take it back.” (There’s evidence that Soros hasn’t donated to MoveOn since 2004. After changing its emphasis, he let go.)
The American Friends Service Committee is another group whose goals were substantially changed following Soros donations which moved the Quaker group into new territory far away from its historical purpose of fostering peace.
Soros Control of Political Reports and The Media
Again, how did Soros get his information removed from WikiLeaks?
We cannot expect non-biased reports from Open Secrets, which has taken $100,000 from Soros’ Open Society Foundation this year. Its reports about donations for and against marijuana legalization are wildly skewed in favor of legalization. How ironic that it published an article in 2014 stating that “money not morals drives marijuana prohibition movement.” 2 (It would have been more honest to say money not morals drives marijuana legalization.)
Soros funds of The Nation Magazine, Center for American Progress and other groups. There is now a echo chamber in the media which supports marijuana legalization. Soros’s influence goes much further than just donating outside money to drug legalization efforts. When The Nation and MSNBC reported that “anti-marijuana legalization groups” CADCA and Partnership for a Drug Free America are tools of the pharmaceutical companies, they did not report how minuscule the donations were compared to total funding for those organizations. Dr. Carl Hart, the spokesperson MSNBC who was asked to comment on donations to CADCA and Partnership for Drug Free America, criticized the donations without stating that he is on the board of the Drug Policy Alliance funded by Soros.
Arianna Huffington is on the Honorary Board of the Drug Policy Alliance, too. The Huffington Post’s marijuana articles are heavily biased in favor of marijuana legalization and rarely report about the negative side of marijuana.
Advocates of marijuana legalization claim with little evidence that pharmaceutical companies are trying to stop marijuana legalization. Pharmaceutical companies — like marijuana companies — give lots of money to politicians, there’s slim evidence pharma is connected to opposition to marijuana legalization.” 3
Claims that George Soros’ interest in marijuana is control of GMO marijuana and hemp may be farfetched. However, he was a huge investor in Monsanto and had some power over legalization in Uruguay. Read about Soros’ biggest failure in Part 2.
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- This year Sean Parker of Napster and Facebook fame is the top funder for California’s marijuana legalization ballot. Soros is still involved and so are the descendants of his friend Peter Lewis who give through New Approach.
- The article listed police unions, prison guard unions, the alcohol industry, pharmaceuticals and for-profit prison companies as the chief funders against legalization. The first two groups don’t have much money to give; alcohol is mixed and donates in small amounts, and the last two were a good guesses. A quote used by a popular meme about cannabis legalization and for profit prisons is accurate, but its context is not. Snopes reported that the$17.4 million spent by Corrections Corporations of America in lobbying had nothing to do with marijuana legalization.
- A quote comes from According to Brookings Institution (which supports and funds marijuana legalization), “pharmaceutical companies have kept an arm’s-length distance from marijuana ballot initiatives.” Read Bootleggers, Baptists, bureaucrats and bongs: how special interests will shape marijuana legalization in Arizona. Since that report, a company in Arizona has given $500,000 against legalization in Arizona, a small amount compared to Soros’ web of funding.