Voters in The Golden State are reportedly deadlocked on Proposition 19, a referendum that would legalize your freshman year of college. Dude. If you’re in California, on Tuesday you should totally vote.
The measure has high-profile supporters and detractors. On the pro side, we have billionaire financier/hemp aficianado George Soros, who wrote a now-kinda-infamous op-ed in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week.
Soros claims,
Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually. It also would reduce the crime, violence and corruption associated with drug markets, and the violations of civil liberties and human rights that occur when large numbers of otherwise law-abiding citizens are subject to arrest. Police could focus on serious crime instead.
Soros is right to point out that legalizing toking may improve the prospects of our neighbors to the south, as the war on drugs has given power to cartels who have taken thousands of lives in Mexico.