Savvy financier George Soros gave away $1 billion in Europe. Now he's turned homeward with some unusual ideas and deep pockets

(from "Time", September 8, 1997)

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Soros deliberately courts controversy and publicity, trying to build a platform from which to propagate his views, a strategy that has earned the enemity of governments from Malaysia to Croatia to Belarus. And he's feeling the presure. "I'm a little bit beleaguered, not too badly but a little bit. I'm overexposed, fighting on too many fronts, and that's a mistake." But that doesn't seem to stop him from engaging on even more fronts as he brings his personal philosophy of "reflexivity" and his megabucks-estimeted at up to $5 billion-to bear on the attitudes he believes are damaging the U.S.

Here he is concerned with the antithesis of state control: the abandonment of state responsibility. He thinks our drug laws are ludicrous, filling up prisons with people who really have a medical problem. He calls welfare reform a "clear-cut case of injustice contrary to this country's proud tradition of welcoming immigrants." He also thinks we die wrong.

And he is doing something about all of it.

Soros is giving $15 million over five years to groups that oppose America's "war on drugs" or want to open the debate about drug policy. He says the "unintended consequences" of the war, including the criminalization of a vast class of drug users, far outweigh the limited and costly success of interdiction. Last year he gave an extra $1 million to persuade voters in California and Arizona to allow doctors to prescribe hitherto illegal drugs, including marijuana, to ease suffering.

"Our drug policy is insane", he says. "And no politician can stand up and say what I'm saying, because it's the third rail-instant electrocution." Soros can get an audience and feels obigated to speak out. "I'm in a unique position. The same applies with Eastern Europe. Therefore I have to do these things."

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Nothing has caused so much bad blood as the money he has given to drug-law reform. In 1994 he bagan funding the Lindesmith Center. Its director, Ethan Nadelmann, campaigns for an end to the socalled war on drugs and advocates sweeping drug-policy reforms. Soros has committed at least $15 million to Lindesmith and other groups. Last fall he bacame a taget of the zero-tolerance lobby after contributing $1 million to help pas state referendums in California and Arizona to legalize the medical use of such drugs as marijuana. Critics of the new marijuana laws argued they were stalking horses for legalization. Califano blamed Soros for underwriting crucial television advertising that swayed the voters, claiming, "A moneyed, out-of-state elite mounted a cynical and deceptive campaign to push its hidden agenda to legalize drugs."

Soros insists he supports nothing of the sort. Rather he wants to decriminalize drug use and focus on treatment instead of punishment. Yes, he has inhaled and enjoyed it, but he does not want marijuana legalized. Nevertheless, he says, the unintended consequences of current drug laws are horrendous: "I do want to weaken the drug laws. I think they are unnecessarily severe. The injustice of the thing is outrageous."

Soros did his lightning-rod act again last month, giving $1 million to the Tides Foundation in San Francisco to finance needle exchanges for addicts. More than a third of new AIDS cases are related to contaminated needles. To him, needle exchanges is still prohibited.

His concern about drug laws led Soros logically to an interest in the criminal-justice system. He established the Center on Crime, Communities and Culture, which this year will give away about $5 million in grants to both service and advocacy organizations. The issue: every year in America some 5.5 million people, or 2% of the population, are in prison, on probation or on parole, a higher percentage than in any other democracy. The cost of a prisoner is enormous: $25,000 a year. The center proposes that alternative, noncustodial sentences be devised.

Any number of people feel the same way about drugs laws or jails as Soros does; few have a billion dollars at their disposal to do something about it. (...)