Up in smoke: Soros-funded drug groups behind pro-marijuana laws in embattled blue states

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Washington Examiner

Two affiliated George Soros-funded groups are influencing marijuana legalization and decriminalization laws in Democratic-run states that have seen substance abuse and crime rates skyrocket in recent years.

Drug Policy Alliance and its advocacy arm, Drug Policy Action, received at least $2.8 million combined from the Soros-led Open Society Foundations network from 2016 to 2020, grant database records show. The Manhattan-based nonprofit groups are helping to lead a sweeping pro-drug campaign across the United States that has seen marijuana-friendly laws passed in various blue states, including Oregon and California, according to campaign finance disclosures and other reports reviewed by the Washington Examiner.

 

Drug Policy Alliance, which says it is "the leading organization in the U.S. promoting alternatives to the war on drugs," was founded in 2000, while its sister advocacy and lobbying affiliate, Drug Policy Action, launched three years later, in 2003. The alliance supports "disempowering police in drug enforcement and response," "reducing punishment for people in the drug trade," and decriminalizing hard drugs like cocaine and heroin, according to its website.

"I see that as an unenlightened, uneducated, and non-academic recommendation that doesn't have America's best public health interests in mind," David Gortler, ex-senior adviser to former President Donald Trump's Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn, told the Washington Examiner. "How will kids and young people be protected and what message does legalization send them?"