Putting up some big bucks for legalization

Putting up some big bucks for legalization
DrugWarRant / Pete Guither / 10,7,2010



If you haven't donated to Prop 19 yet, you still have time (see the link above), and you'll be in some pretty darned good company.
Why We Donated $100,000 to Prop 19

I am President and co-owner of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, a 60-year-old company founded by my German-Jewish grandfather, Emanuel Bronner in 1948. Our family and over 60 employees in California produce the best-selling natural brand of soap in the United States. We use certified organic and fair trade vegetable oils, including non-drug hemp seed oil to super-fat the soaps for smoother lather and moisturizing after-feel. [...]

Dr. Bronner's buys 20 tons of hemp oil for our soaps from Canada annually. For nearly ten years the Bronner family has financially supported bringing back non-drug industrial hemp farming in the US as an environmentally sustainable crop that can be made into a wide variety of products including food, cosmetics, clothing, building materials and more.

I have decided to personally give a $75,000 donation to Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) for “Get Out the Vote” efforts to pass Prop 19 in California, the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010. Adam Eidinger and Alan Amsterdam, co-founders of Capitol Hemp Clothing and Accessories, have donated an additional $25,000 as well. Dr. Bronner's will also provide the company's promotional fire truck to “sound the alarm” on college campuses across California. We hope to mobilize younger voters who are the primary victims of the war on cannabis who know first-hand the lies of cannabis prohibition.

There's a number of incredible stories in this one statement.

• One is the donation of $100,000, ten times what the alcohol distributors gave to the other side.
• One is the fact that the primary need for Dr. Bronner's is industrial hemp, but he's willing to put his money there for the sake of the future, even though this bill won't directly do anything for the industrial hemp problem.
• And one is the fact of the heavy involvement of SSDP in campaigning for Prop 19. These young people are our future, and under the terms of the Prop 19 law that they are working hard to pass, they won't even be able to smoke pot legally. Instead of whining about it like some of the anti-Prop-19 potheads, these young people know that the important thing is to change the paradigm - to stop prohibition. That's the first step is breaking the beast, and then, eventually, we'll find a way to treat those of an age to be sent off to die in wars as though they were human beings.

… but that's not all!
Facebook's Sean Parker Outdoes Moskovitz With $100K For Marijuana Bill

Sean Parker, co-founder of Facebook and Napster, has joined his former colleague Dustin Moskovitz by cutting a large check towards the legalization of marijuana.

Not to be outdone by America's youngest billionaire Moskovitz, who gave $70,000 to California's Proposition 19, Parker has donated $100,000 to the ballot initiative that would make it legal to possess the drug for personal use.

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That's right. The two founders of Facebook… $170,000. Not bad.
According to Sasha Horwitz, the New Media Coordinator for Proposition 19:

Founding fathers of the biggest social networking site in the world, Parker and Moskovitz's contributions represent another sign that political influence in California is skewing younger and in the direction of Silicon Valley. The next wave in political organizing will begin with youth, and that may mean it will be born online. Parker and Moskovitz's technical leadership taps into the generational shift in attitudes toward the failed drug war, which costs the state hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

Now the big boys are starting to play.