It has often been said that ‘politics makes for some strange bedfellows’, and that when it comes to all things political, always ‘follow the money’. It took 45 days to uncover the real reason behind the figures that show a recent 6% decrease in the number of people who favor Prop 19, California’s voter initiative to legalize marijuana use by ballot on Nov. 2. This is the third opinion column about the controversial proposed law that I have composed on the subject. Being a confirmed stoner myself, that should give you, Dear Reader, some idea of the smokescreen’s thickness. When you couple said smokescreen with a plant that changes your reality when ingested, you begin to understand how the whole pot issue is a moving dance floor. Cutting to the chase since I exist at ground zero here on this back lot of Hollywood, if you vote in California, vote NO to Prop 19. Prop 19 is a Trojan horse. The following story, began 45 days and fourteen years ago, and contributed to by Conrad Justice Kiczenski, who is 19 years old, explains the rationale behind my ‘No on 19’ decision.

The back story: Though exempted during World War II, marijuana and hemp were outlawed by Congress in 1937. After years of attempts through the courts, the law which outlawed marijuana was ruled unconstitutional in 1969, the year of Woodstock. Before a single state could capitalize on marijuana’s legal status, the Federal government again banned it under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Nixon and his now famous trashing of the federal report that suggested legalizing pot, were the order of the day. Again into the court system a battle was waged in the war against drugs and pot. In 1994 the Lindesmith Center, a drug policy institute created with the philanthropic (financial) support of George Soros was founded. After court and electoral dynamics, the state of California through the initiative process, voted by majority to allow the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes in 1996. Like the funding of Prop 8, the anti-gay marriage initiative, the funding had come in bulk from a single source. The $5Million donor for Prop 215 was a man named George Soros, who lived part of the year in Las Vegas. In 2000, the growing Lindesmith Center merged with another organization to form the Drug Policy Alliance and Drug Policy Alliance Network

Fourteen years ago, flushed with the victory of Prop 215, I decided to send George Soros a T-shirt supporting Prop 215 that I had designed and sold at Innerworld, the smoke shop in Oceanside, CA. I sent the shirt and a letter expressing thanks to New York City (general delivery), the city for his main residence. Two weeks later I got a reply back from a man named Ethan Nadelmann. A Harvard man, he is the founder of the Lindesmith Center and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the leading organization in the United States promoting alternatives to the war on drugs. I showed the letter I received to all my peeps as a modern day civics lesson. We corresponded, as I realized how intelligent he was, until I asked him about the origin of the national debt and the role of the Federal Reserve in it. All my research prior to 9-11 led to ambiguous beginnings for both subjects.

Forty-five days ago it was announced that a voter signed initiative to legalize and tax pot’s recreational use was in the works. The roar in the underground and in the MMJ world was almost palatable, at first. But with weed that is really A+, there is an aftertaste that rolls back through your mouth like an undercurrent. The aftertaste to this initial positive political reaction was negative, and this negative reaction came from some to the loudest voices in the movement, Jack Herer and Dennis Peron. I won’t go into the karmic blowback these and other opponents in the activist marijuana movement have suffered from their stance against Prop 19, but even local Riverside activist Lanny Swerdlow said in an email that he is receiving bad vibes from supporting, that’s right Sports Fans, supporting, Prop 19.

Almost three weeks ago WOTS was that politico Jeff Stone, a pharmacist and by tradition opposed to dispensaries or pot use for medical purposes over med use, was secretly meeting with ‘growers’ in an effort to hammer out some form of usable ordinance, read acceptable fee ‘kickback’ tax. As the language in Prop 19 states, what and how everything marijuana is regulated is left up to the cities/counties to decide. There is no language to limit any tax to just the $50 an ounce surcharge.

A look at who authored this bill gives you another ‘follow the money’ angle. A Texan named Richard Lee, who moved to Oakland, made millions from the liberal pot culture known as the ‘gray market’ there, then founded a pot university called Oaksterdam where pot culture/horticulture classes are taught, is the entrepreneurial mastermind behind the proposed law. Richard Lee is the face of the latest poster child on the scene for Mary Jane, the arriving carpetbaggers. Lee’s Prop 19 puts all recreational use through the bottleneck of those currently stifling efforts for medical outlets in various city locations. Prop 19 also does not change the state classification for marijuana nor legalize the plant. A bill written by Jack Herer is slated to be put forth as an initiative in 2012. This is the bill to wait for and to vote for at press time. Also a call put in to Sacramento revealed that with the passage of Prop 19, the state would no longer issue nor honor medical marijuana cards, effectively ending the immunity afforded MMJ patients now by police officers and making all marijuana users equal in the eyes of the law. This is projected to be a windfall for lawyers by certain experts who follow the field and estimate the per case costs to be $35K each.

Aside from ‘flawed bill’ Prop 19 for which amendments to bring in “more regulation” are already planned for, quipped Supervisor Stone to a friendly ‘mole’, we must again follow the money, and consider the source. The premier advocate for Proposition 19 is the organization known as the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA). The DPA is the leading organization spearheading the reform of Cannabis policies in the United States, and has been made up of some of the most powerful and influential characters in today’s global petro-bio-chemical-military-banking-industrial complex. Some of the Directors of DPA include the following:

Paul Adolph Volcker, an Honorary Director of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) whose career is closely associated with that of the Federal Reserve Bank. He was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 1975-1979, governing board member of the Federal Reserve in 1979, and was Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979-1987.

Frank Charles Carlucci III is an Honorary Director of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) and has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since at least 1995. His government service included positions as Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1980-1982 and Deputy Director of the CIA from 1978-1980. Carlucci is a director on United Defense Industries (the United States' largest defense contractor), which is owned by the Carlyle Group, a merchant bank based in Washington, D.C., of which Carlucci is the chairman. Carlucci joined Carlyle in 1989.

George Soros is a standing Director of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) and is Chairman of Soros Fund Management. Soros was among the highest paid hedge fund managers in 2009, taking home about $3.3 billion. At the end of 2009, he owned about $6.95 billion distributed among 697 stocks. Soros‟ top 5 investment shareholdings are in gold, Petrobras petroleum company, Hess Corp petroleum company, Monsanto corporation, Citigroup Inc., and Suncor Energy Inc. a petroleum company.

Additional source information comes from the three part series “Will The Geek Inherit The Earth” which also offers up the Obama Nobel Prize as his tie-in to the United Nations global accounting program, and the ‘First Ever Saturday Night Movie’, “The Obama Deception”. Both sources may still be found at www.fullvaluereview.com aka Temecula Calendar. The next link to look at in the money chain is Monsanto.

Monsanto is the world’s largest GM Seed bio-technology corporation and George Soros is one of the major shareholders in that company. In the past the Monsanto corporation are the folks who brought you things like Agent Orange, Terminator Seeds, Monsanto’s Round-up ready Herbicide, and Genetically Modified and Patented Organisms made from Soybean, Corn, and Cotton to name a few. Genetically engineered crops entered the market in 1996 and to this day around 90% of all Soy, Corn, and Cotton grown in the U.S. have been Genetically Engineered and patented by a handful of bio-chemical corporations, with Monsanto owning 90% of all GMO patents. Plans are afoot for Monsanto to ‘own’ cannabis by way of terminator seeds.

The value of the Cannabis plant as an industry, without factoring in the value of Cannabis as a food or medicine, was estimated to be in the billions of dollars in 1938 by an article published in Popular Mechanics Magazine so it’s no wonder why now one of Monsanto’s major shareholders would have an interest in advocating and sponsoring Prop 19,

Monsanto and the Drug Policy Alliance are not the only entities leading the charge to regulate Cannabis for genetic engineering. As published in the September 2009 issue of the Journal of Experimental Botany, Researchers from the College of Biological Science of the University of Minnesota have identified the genes in the Cannabis plant that produce tetra-hydro-cannabinol (THC), claiming in a press release that it is “a first step toward engineering a drug-free cannabis plant”. George Weiblen, an associate professor of plant biology and a co-author of the study, said “Cannabis genetics can contribute to better agriculture, medicine, and drug enforcement”. (Slang – “We’re going to white bread Mary Jane”)

George Weiblen conducts his research under a permit granted by the DEA to import cannabis from outside of the U.S. The two sources from which these imports come from are the Kenex Ltd., a company based in Ontario Canada and the HortaPharm Company based in Amsterdam. These corporations are two of the very few entities which have acquired a DEA permit to import cannabis into the United States. The history and role of these corporations illustrate the potential of genetic engineering in the global cannabis market. Kenex Ltd. initiated its research program on industrial hemp in 1995 in cooperation with Ridgetown College of University of Guelph in Ontario. A research license was granted by Health Canada to proceed with the program. The scope of the project was expanded in 1996 making it the largest hemp research project in Canada. There is one final twist to this tale. Kenex is seeking damages for alleged injuries resulting from the Drug Enforcement Administration's interpretation of the Controlled Substances Act as prohibiting the sale of products that cause THC to enter the human body as of press time.

The utter scope and panoramic tie-ins of the various elements leading to and connected with Prop 19 would seem amazing in a fictionalized Hollywood way were it not for a letter and a T-shirt sent to a billionaire back in 1996. Cannabis prohibition has served to redirect human evolution from that of a decentralized agrarian lifestyle and natural economy, to a centralized petro-chemical military dictatorship/corpocracy controlled through the artificial economic will of private banks and other trans-national corporate interests, then sold through the media to the people. The next stage in continuing this control is in the regulation, licensing, and taxation of cannabis cultivation and use through the only practical means available to the corporate system, which is through genetic engineering and patenting of the cannabis genome.

To achieve this end, the foundation is already being laid for this in the form of the upcoming initiative on the 2010 California ballot. This initiative is called Proposition 19: The Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010.To say that in urging a ‘no’ vote on Prop 19 puts me in with strange bedfellows goes without saying. Vote No on 19.