ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 6, 1996 TAG: 9612060014
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-19 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOSEPH A. CALIFANO
DESPITE THE battery of television spots in which office-seekers splattered each other with negative ads, false accusations and slanderous innuendos, the Anything Goes Emmy for Political Hoodwink in 1996 does not go to a candidate. It belongs to the campaigns in Arizona and California to pass pro-drug legalization propositions, sold to voters as getting tough on violent criminals and offering compassionate care for the dying.
And the award for best supporting role goes to billionaire George Soros, the Daddy Warbucks of drug legalization. He doesn't reside in either state, but he bankrolled both efforts.
What makes it critical for Americans to understand how Arizona and California voters were bamboozled is the announced intention of pro-legalization forces to take their misleading advertising campaigns state-by-state across America.
Arizona Prop. 200 makes it legal under state law for doctors to prescribe LSD, heroin and marijuana - drugs subject to the tightest federal controls because of dangers inherent in their use and the absence of medicinal value commensurate with those dangers. But of 10 ads promoting Prop. 200, not one mentioned that it loosened controls on LSD or heroin; only one noted - in passing for five seconds - that the proposal let doctors prescribe marijuana for seriously and terminally ill patients.
The Arizona ads trumpeted Prop. 200 as a law requiring violent criminals to serve their full sentences and supporting drug prevention and education. In a monument of chutzpah, one TV ad accused opponents of being ``drug legalizers and liquor lobbyists'' fighting to preserve their profits from the 1,000 percent jump in drug use and 300 percent rise in alcohol use in Arizona elementary schools.
In California, TV ads dressed Prop. 215 in the drag of a law permitting doctors to give dying patients marijuana for their nausea from chemotherapy, increase the appetites of wasting cancer and AIDS victims, and relieve their pain. In fact, the proposition permits marijuana to be given to individuals of any age - including children - for any illness and without prescription, simply on the oral recommendation of any doctor.
The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University surveyed California voters two weeks before the election. Fifty-eight percent favored making marijuana available to terminally ill patients. (Not surprisingly, 56 percent of voters favored Prop. 215 on Election Day.) But most surveyed voters opposed making marijuana available for any illness, at any age and without a doctor's prescription, merely on a physician's verbal recommendation - three things that Prop. 215 does. Indeed, once respondents understood these provisions, most believed that Prop. 215 would increase teen-age marijuana use and invite abuse from individuals using and selling pot for nonmedical purposes.
Most money used to buy misleading TV ads for both referenda came from out of state. In Arizona, as of the most recent reporting date (May 31), of $300,490 contributed to support Prop. 200, only $490 came from in state. The remaining $300,000 came from out of state, $200,000 of it from the Drug Policy Foundation - a pet charity of George Soros's - and the other $100,000 came directly from Soros himself.
Of the $1.8 million in reported contributions (as of Oct. 31) to support Prop 215. in California, $1.4 million came from out of state. Here again, the biggest bucks - at least $550,000 - came from Soros, who lives and amasses his wealth 3,000 miles away in New York City.
Private money always has held the power to corrupt governments, thwart the will of the majority and protect powerful interests by unduly influencing politicians. Politics is a wide-open arena where life is unfair and rules are as loose as those in an illegal cock fight. We're supposed to rely on the instincts of voters to sort it all out and come to sound conclusions.
But in California and Arizona, the voters never had a chance. A moneyed, out-of-state elite mounted a cynical and deceptive campaign to push its hidden agenda to legalize drugs. How do we establish accountability to tell the truth in such advertising? Surely some obligation, moral if not legal, to speak the truth goes along with the right to speak in support of any idea, however outrageous.
Joseph A. Califano is president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.
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