ho is George Soros and what is he doing here in Massachusetts?
Soros is the world-renowned currency speculator - I think currency ''trader'' is the term he would prefer - who has bet and won stacks of cash in the international money markets. Starting in the late 1980s, the Hungarian-born businessman channeled tens of millions of dollars into post-Cold War Eastern Europe. His aims were generally laudable. His nonprofit organizations, the Soros Foundation and the Open Society Institute, funded ''democracy-strengthening'' initiatives aimed at creating civil societies where only totalitarian dictatorships had existed before.
Soros garnered well-deserved praise for trying to fix Eastern Europe's broken societies. (His sallies into big-think journalism, including his since-retracted prediction of the ''disintegration of the global capitalist system'' are another matter.) But when he uses his wealth to fix our broken society ... the reaction is quite different indeed.
About three years ago, Soros started financing various reform efforts in the United States. He funded one of the first lawsuits against a handgun manufacturer, and he has invested in welfare and immigration reform schemes. But his most controversial cause has been his war against the war on drugs: he has underwritten needle exhange programs for addicts, and has helped pay for ballot initiatives for the decriminalization of marijuana for medical use in over a dozen states.
Each year he devotes about $1 million of his personal funds to these electoral efforts, and he has already spent almost $300,000 here backing Question 8 on next week's Massachusetts ballot. Question 8 calls for the creation of a Drug Treatment Trust Fund, with the money to be directed to chronically underfunded drug rehabilitation programs. Likewise, assets seized from drug dealers would flow into the trust fund, rather than into the district attorneys' coffers. Not surprisingly, all 11 Massachusetts district attorneys oppose it.
In Massachusetts, as elsewhere, Soros works in concert with two other large donors: businessmen Peter Lewis and John Sperling, each of whom has used marijuana medically. Sperling had prostate cancer, and Lewis has used marijuana for circulatory problems. Soros' own motives are more opaque. His drug-policy adviser, Ethan Nadelmann, told me that Soros equates the American government's abuse of power in the drug war with the Fascist regimes in Hungary and Nazi Germany. That's a stretch.
Soros may be on the side of the angels, and I intend to vote ''yes'' on Question 8. (As do 69 per cent of the state's voters recently polled by KRC Communications Research, the Globe's polling firm.) However, this isn't Eastern Europe, and his charity has been received much more coolly here. His claim to ''have tried marijuana and enjoyed it'' has exposed him to the charge that his ultimate aim is to decriminalize pot and other drugs. Indeed, former Health, Education and Welfare secretary Joseph Califano has branded him ''the Daddy Warbucks of drug legalization.''
The Massachusetts District Attorneys Association couldn't agree more. ''If you put a microphone up to George Soros and asked him if he supports drug decriminalization, he would say no,'' says Geline Williams, executive director of the MDDA. ''But if you look at the fine text of what he's putting forward, that's exactly what he accomplishes.'' Her point is that, under Soros' proposed law, drug dealers can pass themselves off as addicts, enter treatment programs, and avoid criminal prosecution.
''My hat's off to the guy,'' Williams says. ''The public doesn't know that he and two of his billionaire philosophical allies are purchasing a law here in Massachusetts.''
The Final Word
A sharp-eyed Globe reader spotted the following death notice in Monday's newspaper: ''HALLOWELL - Mary Francis (McKey) on October 28, 2000 ... A Memorial Service at the Agawam Hunt Club, 15 Roger Williams Ave., Rumford RI at 4:00 PM on Sunday, November 5, 2000. In lieu of flowers, please vote for Al Gore.''
Alex Beam's e-dress is
beam@globe.com
