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.

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.)

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