Alcohol Lobby Now Openly Spending Against CA’s Legal Pot Initiative in Alliance with Police Industrial Complex

Big Alcohol’s decision to squash marijuana law reform to protect its bottom line is simply politics as usual.

Paul Armentano
NORML Deputy Director
Alternet

It is said that politics makes strange bedfellows, but there are arguably few stranger than the emerging alliance between two of California’s most powerful political players: the police-industrial complex and Big Alcohol. Campaign finance reports from the Golden State disclose that the California Beer and Beverage Distributors — a trade organization that represents over 100 beer distributors statewide — is one of the primary backers of the lobby group Public Safety First, sponsors of the No on Prop. 19 campaign.

According to the California Secretary of State’s office, the beer lobby donated $10,000 to Public Safety First on September 7, 2010. The donation came just days before PSF issued an online mailing alleging that the passage of Prop. 19 — which would legalize the private adult use and cultivation of limited amounts of cannabis, and allow local governments the option of regulating its commercial production and retail distribution — would inevitably lead to stoned school bus drivers and crossing guards, and will cause California public schools to “lose as much as $9.4 billion in federal funding.” (Needless to say, passage of the measure would do none of these things.)

While it’s hardly astonishing that the corporate beer lobby would oppose efforts to legalize marijuana, a non-toxic, ostensibly safer alternative to alcohol, it is surprising to see how quickly the law enforcement lobby — to date the largest supporters of PSF — is willing to get into bed with big booze. So far, the Cal Beer and Beverage Distributors $10,000 appropriation is one of the largest monetary donations received by Public Safety First, third only to the $30,000 donated by the California Police Chief’s Association and the $20,500 donated by the California Narcotics Officers Association. (Overall, PSF has had a notoriously difficult time raising money for its effort. Last month, the East Bay Express reported that total financial contributions to the Prop. 19 campaign were well ahead of those reported for Public Safety First, which at that time had only raised $61,000, with just one citizen donor.)