Beer vs. Pot: Which Will Prevail in California Come November?

(Sept. 22) -- The California Beer & Beverage Distributors, an industry lobbying group, is spending money to torpedo Proposition 19, a November ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana in the state.

"[I]t donated $10,000 to Public Safety First, a committee organized to oppose the proposition, on Sept. 7, 2010, though the contribution was only recently made public," reports The Huffington Post "The alcohol industry has long seen illicit drugs as a threat to sales, as consumers may substitute pot for booze. A night spent on the couch smoking marijuana and watching television is a night not spent at the bar."

Not all beer producers feel the same way. Two notable microbrewers, Sierra Nevada and Stone Brewing Co., have protested CBBD's campaign.

Public Safety First, the anti-legalization group the CBBD has aligned itself with, is largely composed of police, who are threatened by a change of law. Police can keep property seized in drug raids, and federal and state funding of the drug war props up local police budgets.

Stephen Gutwillig, California director of the Drug Policy Alliance, questioned the partnership of police and the beer industry. "Who knows better than law enforcement the violence, death and disease booze inflicts on our society?" he told The Huffington Post. "The Feds clock it at $200 billion a year, including alcohol's direct involvement in up to 30 percent of violent crime every year. Marijuana consumption has none of those associations."

Meanwhile, in an ironic twist, even California's pro-cannabis supporters have been divided by Prop. 19, with some current medical marijuana patients coming out against it on the basis that it would give local governments the power to restrict access to their medicine. (Marijuana has been legal for some patients for medicinal uses in California, with a doctor's prescription, since 1996 and the passage of Proposition 215.)

So while much of the rest of the country might have an image of California as a cannabis user's utopia, the true test of the limits of the state's marijuana-tolerance appears to have just begun in earnest.

Read more at The Huffington Post.