TREATING DRUG OFFENDERS - HUGE COFFERS FUND EFFORT TO REPLICATE PROP 36 IN
OTHER STATES

California's new drug treatment initiative may soon go nationwide,
propelled by a flood of campaign spending.

A trio of megamillionaires -- George Soros, the financier whose wealth is
estimated at $5 billion, John Sperling, worth around $550 million and Peter
Lewis, worth $1.1 billion -- are spending their own money to replicate
Proposition 36, the state law that mandates treatment rather than jail
terms for nonviolent narcotics offenders.

The three have spent $20 million in recent years on promoting a string of
successful state initiatives, including $3 million in last year's campaign
for Proposition 36, which goes into effect today. They are planning to
spend millions more to repeat that success in Florida, Michigan and Ohio.

"We're going to rub this in the noses of Congress and the administration,"
said Sperling, founder of the for-profit University of Phoenix.

"The American people realize that the drug war is a failure, that it's a
disaster and something has to be done about it," he said. "We're going to
keep going to the initiative process until the politicians start listening."

Soros is well known for putting hundreds of millions of dollars into his
Open Society Institute, which has helped Eastern Europe transition from
communism to democracy. Lewis is chairman of Progressive Insurance Inc. of
Cleveland and is a major patron of the arts.

Opponents call them rich carpetbaggers.

"They're buying public policy for their own personal agenda," said Calvina
Fay, executive director of Drug-Free America Foundation, a Florida group
that played a behind-the-scenes role in the fight last year against
Proposition 36.

"It's dangerous for our democracy when very wealthy men from out of state
can put measures on the ballot, run very misleading ads and succeed in
getting the laws changed," she said.

The crusade by the unlikely trio began in 1996, when they were brought
together by Ethan Nadelmann, a former Princeton University professor who
had become the drug liberalization movement's chief strategist. The three
businessmen quickly decided to back California's Proposition 215, to
legalize medical use of marijuana, and Arizona's Proposition 200, a
sentencing-reform measure that later served as model for Proposition 36.

The two campaigns won by a wide margin, and success soon begat more success.

Since then, the three men have financed 15 victorious campaigns in 10
states and the District of Columbia.

Most of the initiatives have focused on three issues: sentencing reform,
such as Proposition 36; allowing medical use of marijuana; and ending
police powers to confiscate property from drug defendants before conviction.

A big part of the troika's success is the fact that they have vastly
outspent their opposition. Last year, for example, they provided $3 million
of the $3.5 million spent by proponents of Proposition 36, while opponents
- -- backed by dozens of state elected officials -- only spent $340,000. The
measure received 61 percent of the vote in November.

In the coming weeks, the three are expected to give final approval to a
proposal by their advisers to finance Proposition 36-style initiatives in
Florida, Michigan and Ohio, at a cost of as much as $3 million per state.
In each case, polling shows the initiatives with more than 20-point leads,
said Bill Zimmerman, the Santa Monica consultant who has managed many of
the past campaigns.

The hottest battle will be in Florida, where Gov. Jeb Bush is expected to
face a tough re-election race against potential Democratic nominee Janet
Reno, the attorney general in the Clinton administration.

Bush opposes the sentencing initiative, and Reno would be under great
pressure to oppose it too.

Bush's drug policy director, James McDonough, has already started
campaigning against the measure, calling it "a hoax on the citizens of
Florida. "

"This outright chicanery offers voters an illusion of treatment while
concealing its true purpose -- the normalization of drug abuse in Florida,"
he said.

McDonough said the campaign will be led by Fay's organization, Drug-Free
America Foundation, which is linked to several major Republican donors.

Fay made it clear that liberalization will be described as a Trojan horse
for out-and-out legalization.

Nonsense, Nadelmann says. He points out that like Proposition 36, the
initiatives slated for Florida, Ohio and Michigan would maintain current
criminal penalties for selling or manufacturing narcotics and would
strengthen treatment programs to help get addicts off drugs.

He admits, however, that "the vast majority" of the drug reform movement
quietly supports legalization of drugs in a system that would tax and
regulate them in much the same way as alcohol, tobacco and prescription
drugs. That position is not advocated by Soros, Lewis and Sperling, he said.

Soros and Sperling have admitted smoking marijuana in the past, although
they say they have not done so in recent years. Lewis was arrested in New
Zealand last year for alleged possession of marijuana and hashish; he was
released without conviction after making a donation to a local drug
rehabilitation center.

Through representatives, Soros and Lewis declined to be interviewed by The
Chronicle.

Sperling says his sympathy for medical use of marijuana comes partly from
his experience in the late 1970s, when he smoked it after he was given
radioactive implants to treat his prostate cancer. "Nothing stopped the
burning sensation like marijuana," he said. "I think people ought to be
able to use marijuana to help them over rough spots, like I did."

George Soros Age: 70

Business: President and chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC, a private
investment firm.

Other: Founder of the Soros Foundations, a consortium of pro- democracy
institutes to which he gives hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

Peter Lewis

Age: 67

Business: CEO and chairman of Progressive Insurance Inc. in Cleveland, the
nation's fifth-largest auto insurer.

Other: Longtime philanthropist. Donations include: $50 million to the
Guggenheim Museum in New York (of which he is chairman of the board); $55
million to Princeton University (of which he is a trustee).

John Sperling

Age: 80

Business: CEO and chairman of Apollo Group Inc., parent company of the
University of Phoenix and Western International University.

A growing movement to liberalize drug policy Measures funded by George
Soros, Peter Lewis and John Sperling are marked with an asterisk(x).

Alaska

(x) 1998 - Medical marijuana

Arizona

(x) 1996 - Prop. 200, drug treatment instead of jail time; medical
marijuana. Both upheld in 1998 initiatives.

California

(x) 1996 - Medical marijuana

(x) 2000 - Prop. 36, drug treatment instead of jail time.

Nevada

1998, 2000 - Medical use of marijuana

(x) 2001 - Partial decriminalization of marijuana

Colorado

(x) 2000 - Medical marijuana

Washington

(x) 1998 - Medical marijuana

Hawaii

1999 - Industrial hemp

2000 - Medical marijuana

Louisiana

(x) 2001 - End of mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession;
reduction of other penalties for drug crimes.

Minnesota

1999 - Industrial hemp

Maine

(x) 1999 - Medical marijuana

Michigan

1998 - Reduction of penalties for drug crimes.

North Dakota

1999 - Industrial hemp

Utah

(x) 2000 - Asset forfeiture reform

Washington D.C.

(x) 1998 - Medical marijuana

Oregon

(x) 1998 - Medical marijuana

(x) 1998 - Defeated measure to recriminalize marijuana possession

(x) 2000 - Asset forfeiture reform

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