George Soros gives big to drug rehab measure, California. [View All]

[AlCzervik]

Liberal billionaire George Soros is wading back into California’s drug and rehabilitation laws, donating $1 million to a proposed ballot measure that would relax penalties for nonviolent drug offenses.

The measure would expand California’s drug treatment program, modify the state’s parole laws as well as change possession of marijuana from a misdemeanor to an infraction, the legal equivalent of a traffic ticket.

Soros, a well-known Democratic financier who donated millions of his personal fortune to try to oust President Bush from office in 2004, is no stranger to California ballot measures. In 2000, the New York investor poured in more than $1 million of his own money to pass Proposition 36, California’s landmark drug treatment law.

That measure mandated drug treatment instead of incarceration for people arrested and convicted of being under the influence or in possession of drugs, including harder substances such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.

Four years earlier, in 1996, he gave close to $500,000 to pass Proposition 215, the state’s medical marijuana initiative, according to news reports.

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